Speed

[Orpheuss]

I know this is a rather common night experiment... but this is my own:

Would you change something in the composition? What about exposure?
I know it would have been more dramatical if there were clouds on the sky...

Camera: Sony DSC-H3
Speed: 10s
Aperture: f8
ISO: 100

[barabe]

Indeed it is a classic night exercise but everyone has to try it out once at least. I like the vanishing point of your light streaks. You have done it very nicely.

[KansaiGreenie]

Hi Orpheuss,

This is nice. A classic shot. I agree with barabe I like the vanishing point. Personally, I would have moved it more to the right, almost to the edge of the frame, which would make the image even more dramatic, but I don't think that you have to do that.

I think that there are two things you could do to take this image (which is good) and make it amazing.

First, I would recommend that you shoot it a little earlier at night. If you shoot just after the sun has gone down, you will get a wonderful cobalt blue sky. There is a good tutorial here on DPS about it. Right now the black sky is just negative space and throws off the balance of the image.

Second, I think that you need more traffic in the image. A ten second exposure is OK for a scene with lots of traffic. However, in the scene that you are capturing the traffic is rather light. Shooting a little earlier might help that. Right now, where I live the sun goes down about 6:30 so a twilight shot is about 6:45 a little late, but still during the tail end of rush hour. The other thing you can do, and something that I've done before, is to layer multiple images in Photoshop, so that it looks like there was a lot more traffic.

I have couple of images that I made in February on my blog that show you what I mean. Here and Here.

This is a great location and a good image and has real potential to be amazing.

KG

P.S. I looks like you horizon might be leaning a little to the left. It's an easy fix in Photoshop, or use a bubble level on top of the camera. (I bought a perfect one at Walmart for a dollar.)

[Orpheuss]

Thank you KG,

this was a wonderful analysis for my picture. I learned a tremendous amount of information from your post, and I look forward to try your advices. You made me want to try to remake this, while I abandoned this experiment because of the lack of ideeas. Thanks again,

Orpheuss