Hoover Dam at Night

[Lespaulstandard]

Taken August 14, 2009
Nikon D60
f/9
25 sec.
ISO 200

I would love to hear any suggestions you may have. The photo is unedited. I wouldn't really know where to start.

[emanhaud]

Cool shot! It is already a long exposure, but I still wish there was a little more detail toward the base of the towers. I like the reflections of the lights in the water.

[windrider86]

It feels crooked to me. Can you straighten it out? The 2 towers to the left anyway. Perspective tool can help with that.
For me it's very busy and the 2 bright lights are distracting. Remember the brighter areas will always catch your eye first.
Maybe try cloning out the wires above the new bridge.
Looks like its really coming along

[fletch]

I find myself wishing you had panned left a bit in the composition. The bridge is cut off and since that is the brightest part of the frame that is where by attention is drawn to.

Due to the very bright lights and the large expanse of darkness this might actually be an occasion where HDR would be a good choice. (It rarely is!)

[ohfour]

The composition feels slightly awkward to me, but without knowing what the scene was like outside the frame it's hard to know what else you could do with it.

My biggest suggestion would be to take it again during twilight. You'll get beautiful soft light, a lot more detail in the sky and the towers, and all those artificial lights won't overwhelm the shot so much.

It's quite hard to photograph anything with artificial lights at night, as you generally just end up with a black shot dominated by a few bright points of light. At dusk, that totally changes :-)

[Lespaulstandard]

This was pretty much a photograph of opportunity. I just happened to be going across the dam at 2:30 in the morning and thought it was worth a shot or two.

I had forgotten the tripod at home so this was taken with the camera sitting on a concrete barrier. If I had panned any farther to the right, the concrete was in the shot. That's why the new bridge is cut off.

Next time I pass by, I'll try it again with some new ideas and a tripod this time.

[clikrr]

This is a great subject.

I think you could have composed the image a little better by angling your camera down a little and getting rid of those bright lights at the top, they are very distracting. You could have zoomed in a little tighter if your lens allowed instead. This way you could have bumped up the ISO a little higher to get more detail of the columns and wall, but it might have produced more noise in the shadows.

A little bit of trivia about the dam - because there is so much concrete used in the wall it takes over 50 years to cure completely. The wall could last for about 500 years without any maintenance.

[fletch]

Originally Posted by clikrr

This way you could have bumped up the ISO a little higher to get more detail of the columns and wall, but it might have produced more noise in the shadows.

I'm intreguied why you think bumping up the ISO will give you more details in the columns and wall.

Increasing the exposure will make the photo brighter (ISO is one way to do this) but it will also blow out more detail in the bright parts. You could do this by opening up the aperture or using a longer shutter as well. First option for me would be the aperture, there is no foreground detail so DoF should not be a problem and this would introduce the least noise. ISO would be the last choice due to the ammount of noise it would produce.