This picture arose from a mix of ignorance, inexperience and serendipity. I shot this in a bike path underpass in Missoula Montana in February 2008. I had recently bought a Nikon 50mm f1.8 (my first lens ever that came even close to that f-stop), but hadn't played with it in low light yet. I remember thinking that the 50mm should be able to handle the limited light in the tunnel and snapped a photo. The result was a blurry silhouette of my friends with a slightly blurred view of the winter landscape in front of them outside the tunnel. I liked it. It has a surreal look, the blurring of the figures is not too harsh, the scene ahead is discernible, and the snow outside leant a brightness and good contrast to the dark interior (nice for the monochrome conversion). But I did take away some lessons from this picture.
1. There is a limit to what types of "low-light", hand-held pictures any wide aperture lens can handle. I now know when a tripod is needed.
2. The dumbest thing I did: even if the 50mm could have exposed a sharp shot with the ambient light, I took the picture on Aperture mode but never changed it from f22 from an earlier landscape when I wanted greater DOF. I now switch my lenses back and walk around with them on f8. A solid f-stop for spontaneous pictures and it's easier to get to lower and higher f-stops from the mid-range f8 if I have time to set up a desired DOF for a picture.
