City Skylines

Photographing city skylines at night is a real challenge if you want to get a really good photograph. First you need to find a great vantage point to create a good composition. Then you need just the right light to balance your sky against your foreground, and not blow out all the lights. Since I have always done these with just one shot, it is a matter of shooting several shots as the sky gets progressivly darker. You can make adjustments in Photoshop or some other editing program, but you can only fix so much. The big thing in digital photography is now HDR. This stands for High Dynamic Range.  In simple terms, you take anywhere from 3 to 7 exposures and bracket with over and under exposures. This captures all the detail in the brighest lights, and all the detail in the darkest shadows. This data is then brought into Photoshop and it blends all this data together to create the image. There is a seperate software called Photomatix that processes these tpes of merged files even better than Photoshop does. I have the software now and have just started experimenting with this type of photography.

Living very close to St. Louis gives me a good skyline to practice on. These are long exposure shots were a tripod and cable release are mandatory. The worst thing about these are being down on the East St. Louis riverfront after dark. A nasty crime ridden place. I have observed river rats bigger that small dogs.

Here is a skyline scene I did of Nashville TN. from my last trip there. I was on an old bridge that had been converted to a bicycle and foot traffic only bridge. That is the Cumberland River that winds around the city of Nashville. I had to wait for the sun to get down far enough below the skyline to bring out the colors and cloud detail. These really are about patience and timing.

This is a panoramic scene of the Chicago IL. skyline all the way out to the end of Navy Pier. This is 12 vertical photos stitched together in Photoshop. I had never tried to do one of these at night. I was in Chicago for a seminar so I went out to the Adler Planetarium and shot it from there. I waited until the sun got down to the left side of the photo, but you can see the dramatic falloff of light across the city as the sun is now below the horizion at this point. I felt it was OK for a first attempt, but I need a lot more practice. If you click on any photo they will open in another window so you can see them a little better. 

Photographing Water Falls

There are two things I find to be the most relaxing, stress relieving sounds in the world. One is the sound of waves rolling up on the beach, and the other is a waterfall. Photographing waterfalls requires a little bit of effort and thought to really create a nice image. The look of the water can be dramatically changed by the shutter speed used. A fast shutter speed freezes the action or motion of the water and gives it that time stood still look. I prefer the long exposure shots that make the water smooth out and go to that cottony soft look. To me this implies motion even though you are looking at a still photograph.This requires a tripod and a long shutter exposure. Normally between 2-4 seconds will create this soft effect on the moving water. The great thing is you can find small waterfalls almost anywhere.

I was at a conference at the Opryland hotel in Nashville, TN. last year. The giant indoor atrium of the hotel is pretty amazing. It is like a giant botanical garden complete with a man made river and numerous waterfalls. By carefully framing and composing your shots, you can create some beautiful images. These two waterfall shots on the left are from inside the hotel atruium.

 This waterfall on the right is Laural Falls in Smokey Mountain National Park. It is about a 1.5 mile hike up to capture this  photo. I was there in the fall, and it had been very dry.The water volume of all the falls was low compared to their normal flows. But even a small trickle of water can be transformed into a beautiful scene with a long exposure capture. 

I just seem to have bad luck when I stop to photograph a natural waterfall. It is always a dry spell and the water volume of the falls is much lower than normal. This photo on the left is Rainbow Falls, located in Hilo HI. It is an 80 foot high fall that at full volume can be as much as 100 feet across. Now Hilo is one of the wettest places in the United States. But, the short time I was there, it had been extremely dry. So I still managed a nice watefall shot, but It would have been much more dramatic to have about five times as much water flowing over that lava shelf. So I guess I will just have to go back and try again! 

Just have your camera on a sturdy tripod and use a cable release. A low ISO setting and stop down to between f11 to f22 will usually give you a 2-4 second exposure even in fairly bright daylight. If you need a longer exposure, add a polarizer filter to your lens and it will darken the scene and force your camera to use an even longer exposure.

Scott