Downtown at night

[Rahul]

This is my first attempt at the night time photography. Took this picture from a nearby hill near my home. The downtown buildings in the pic are about 6~7 mi away from where I took this pic. No other high rise nearby so I selected this spot on the hill for the pic. Moreover, I wanted to keep the freeway/highway crossing into the composition from left and then out. No post processing except the watermark and cropping from the left side (where a plane was heading for landing).

Kindly critique and point out areas I could improve. I would like to learn from the experienced ones (or the non-experienced) in this forum on how would you compose it or anything else would do differently.



Large Pic

Here's the exif data:
Date/Time: 8/27/2010 8:01:04 PM
Shooting Mode Manual Exposure
Exposure 30.0 sec
Aperture 13.0
Metering Mode Center-Weighted Average Metering
ISO Speed 100
Focal Length 70.0mm
White Balance Mode Auto
AF Mode One-Shot AF

[derekspacelewis]

Well Rahul Im definitely not one of the most experienced on this site lol but it looks to me like you've done a great job on this one. I guess you could do a little shorter exposure so the headlights aren't so overpowering but to be honest I think they look good how they are. And the only other thing is that for some reason it looks slightly slanted to the right? Its really hard to tell and I've stared at the picture for a good couple of minutes and I'm still not positive lol. But great job and keep it up!

[KansaiGreenie]

Hi Rhaul,

Great image! I really like it. I love the lines of the traffic and the buildings in the background. This is a great spot.

Looking at this image a couple of things come to mind...

First, you've split the frame with the horizon right at the middle. I think that it might be an even more engaging image if there was less sky. You could try a long vertical crop to remove some of the empty space at the top, but I'm not sure that you need to. You might try it and see if you like it.

The other thing, this image is quite orange, which is very interesting, but I'm wondering what it would look like with a 'cooler' color temperature. It might not be as good, but you might try playing around with the white balance. You had it on auto and I'm guessing that the camera set the white balance for 'daylight' which I think is too warm for this image.

I hope that helps.

KG

[Rahul]

Thank you Derek. On a deeper inspection, the pic does look slanting to right. I blame the uneven surface of the hill, even though I did adjust the tripod legs to get the leveled horizon.

Thank you, KG for your input. While framing the picture, I had to chose between the empty sky or the dark space in the bottom. Then, it also had another street with fences and junkyard which was causing more distraction. I can definitely crop the access sky, making it panoramic.

The orange-ish effect is due to the use of low sodium vapor lamps our city uses due to its vicinity to the Lick Observatory (also in the background in the pic here). It produces less light pollution at night, enabling the observatory to do their research. But definitely your suggestion to experiment with WB is good one and I'll be trying it the next time.

Thank you for your valuable suggestions.

[Jayman11]

Great image! The composition is wonderful! I have been dying to get out and try some of these shots but have yet to find a great spot to shoot.