Empty football(soccer) field at night.

[Shor]

Hi,
I am new with photography, so a lot of the time I'm not sure what I am doing!
So I am basically asking for some input on this shot I took..what have I done wrong, and what should I think about in shots like these?
[Click image for links to larger versions]

focal length: 116mm
aperture: f/13
shutter: 8 sec
iso: 100 (lowest possible)

I thought the image of the empty lit up field with lights and the road in the background would be a nice scene, but I am not liking what I ended up with 100%.
Things I thought about was trying to get as much as I could in focus, so I upped the aperture to what I thought was adequate for the shot, and focus is on the far goal post.
Exposure is kinda long (8 secs), but I wonder if it's worth upping the ISO (I shot at the lowest my camera allows) in order to maybe get a sharper image with a faster shutter? I tend to never shoot at higher ISO than the lowest when I am using a tripod...maybe this is a mistake.
Only post "processing" I did was crop the image..I am not very familiar/comfortable with this area of photography yet, but I am very eager to learn.

Please, any input to a newbie like me is very very welcome!
Thanks!

[spellbound]

I am by no means an expert but I'll see how I go.....

IMO what is letting you down with this shot is the subject, more so, the way you portray it. You say your focus is the empty soccer field, yet when I look at your picture I find my eye wandering all over the place until it comes to rest on the bright neon sign on the far right.. If I were to capture this field, I would get in much closer and perhaps think a bit about which angle I am going to shoot it from. Maybe trying to capture the whole field should not be the aim. You could get in real close, capture part of the goal, looking out over the empty playing field and you would still be telling the same story. 2/3's of your shot is background, so for me your "subject" just blends in.

From a technical point of view I think you handled the exposure really well. None of the lights are "blown" and you have exposed for the playing surface really nicely. As a consequence the background is very dark...hence what I was saying earlier.

Hopefully you can go back and try a few other things, think of telling your story a "different" way and see how you go.

[Shor]

Thanks a lot for your views.
I have to agree with you about the neon light being distracting..I was semi-aware of it..but wasn't sure how to get around it.
The shot is taken from my balcony on the 7th floor, so I didn't have many options to get the shot from another angle right then...also one of the lamp posts from the street is kinda in the shot as well..but I couldn't get around that either.

I will give it a shot from another angle..I might head down to the opposite side of where I was shooting from then and see how that goes.
Lucky it's very close to where I live so I can easily go back

Again..thanks a lot for taking the time to read through my post and critique my photography, greatly appreciated! I stared myself blind on my photo so I couldn't really get a clear view of what I was doing wrong last night.

[Shor]

I played around with my original shot some today, since I haven't had much of any chance to go out and get some shots today.
I tried my best to make the neon light less distracting and hopefully this fixes my shot a little bit.
What do you guys think?

[NetG]

Are you able to get down on the field? If I were taking a night shot of an empty field, I would want my tripod on the corner, a wide angle shot, and position the horizon about 2/3 up my frame.

Technically, I think it worked ok for you as far as exposure levels. Maybe play with your timing a little bit to see if you can get stars out of your lights, but I would basically get close to your subject to let it take up a lot of your view. I would probably focus on one of the lines and try a lower f number so the background wasn't as clear - that's the other option, instead of trying for stars, try to get rid of any individual light definition.

That's totally subjective, though. From your angle, I think you would want to crop it about at that roadway/pathway which loops back, so your field is 2/3 of your view, as spellbound was saying. As there's so much in your image which isn't the field, the field just isn't what we'll be looking at, really.

[Shor]

Heya NetG

Yep I can head down there and take photos, which I got really tempted to do after the ideas in this thread! I didn't get round to tonight though since the field was getting used..and it's so annoying with people running around in my photos where I need longer exposures
I will get some shots in one of the coming days though for sure

I like your ideas and views.

I'm struggling with finding a nice crop of the photo though..but I did play around with it some and kinda settled on this crop:


Did you mean something like this?
The only annoying part of it is that the neon light sign is pulling away from the subject even more in this crop, but i do kinda like this crop still though.
I wish I could crop it out, but if I crop that sign out...I also lose the lights lighting up the field! Crop crop crop crop

Thanks again to both of you for taking your time and giving me some pointers.
I really appreciate all the help I can get in becoming a better photographer...so much to learn...my eyes don't really see the ideal croppings yet..but I am getting much more ideas from posting here!

[san_at_cliff]

I think you need to shoot this from a higher elevation to get wider coverage on your frame. I mean the field itself is not broad and tall enough in the final picture hence it loses interest. In my opinion.

[Shor]

That's a fair point, san_at_cliff. Thanks for that.
I am going to abandon this angle right now either way though i think. Next step is playing around with other angles to capture this, and I might get a chance to try it from higher up as well.
Composition is definitely my weakest point in photography..but every day I'm trying ot get better

[NetG]

Hey Shor - I actually did like that tighter crop better.

Do you necessarily need the lights which are lighting the field? If so, I'd go for a smaller crop not showing the whole field, possibly even portrait orientation in close with a light and illuminated area, for that kind of effect.

I think you want to show field and darkness to show that it's an empty field at night - I'm not sure capturing the lights illuminating it adds much. Depending on the angle, though, you could make a powerful image with the lights - a lit kind of loneliness, darkness all around and lights just lighting emptiness.

[Shor]

A portrait crop is an interesting idea.
I didn't necessarily *need* those lights in..but if I had done a tighter crop I'd basically cut off the light posts leaving posts sticking up into the top of the photo..looking sorta odd.
I might play around with completely different crops, such as portrait as you said..I suppose the possibilities for a single photo are infinite, which is such an awesome thing about photography

I was kinda resorting to the fact that that the image was beyond repair since the composition isn't all that great...but perhaps different crops will help out. I will definitely put some more time into playing around with it now, thanks