Thursday, January 22, 2009

State Street, Harrisburg (City at Night)


OK, I can't really decide which one I like the best. I like the colors in the first one but I'm not sure if the red traffic lights add to or distract from the picture. That is solved with the black and white version. The b+w treatment kind of emphasizes just how the cold night was. I like the star effect with the street lights, too. What do you think?
This is the Pennsylvania State Capital Building in Harrisburg. The first building on the left edge of the picture is St. Patrick's Cathedral. I was set up on the grass median on State Street, no more than 100 feet off of Front Street, so the Susquehanna River is within 100 yards behind me. And now this is where I pretend I know what I was doing; I used my new 50mm lens for this one, my first shot (not shown here) was at ISO 100, f/1.8 and 1/5 of a second exposure. I didn't like it, it was too dark on the outside of the picture. So I adjusted to f/11 and used a 13 second exposure, so you see car light trails along the bottom. And of course I was using my tripod and timer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the color minus the red lights. Always thought this was a beautiful building.
Almost as nice as a Painted Gentleman Barn.

Brad Myers said...

Haney the problem you had with the first photo you mentioned was the F1.8, it wasn't much depth of field. Moving to 11 was a better choice. I also like the color image better. To remove the red lights shoot a wifer lens and then move up to remove the lights.