Experimental Photography Friday

This series of experimental photographic techniques on a friday is a bit of an accident to be honest. I suppose it's because I don't always go running on a Friday so have more time to mess about.

So far we have had the Lakeside Long exposure, then the rainy day in Penrith and the strange one legged people, and then the pylonbackdropped with a moving sky.
Last week I had a bit of a Blip (see what I did there) when my experiments went badly wrong and I ended up trying something a bit radical in PP instead.

Tonight I set myself up on a high bank just a couple of hundred metres away from the city centres busy roundabout and Cumbria busiest road. My aim was to capture the light trails from the vehicles and also the last of the daylight in the sky to add a bit of interest to the scene.

I already knew I wanted to have the ugly Civic Centre building as the bookend to the LHS of my frame and I hoped it would have some lights on inside. The RHS skyline of the frame was just tree really which is a bit of a shame - more lit buildings might have been better but I think its turned out OK because the road leads in/out of the RHS which I think works well.

After setting up the tripod etc I then zoomed in x10 on live view and perfected the focus on the verticals of the concrete and windows of the tower block (dont really know if this was the best point to choose but as the most defined aspect of the image I thought it should also be the sharpest). Then I knocked off autofocus so it couldnt change.

Next I placed a one stop graduated filter (to hold back the sky, which was still clearly much brighter than the lower portion of the frame), and a three stop neutral density
filter in front of the lens. (no clever choice there - I only own two filters - those ones

Using Manual mode I selected ISO 100 and 30 seconds. I then closed the aperture down until a correct exposure was indicated by the camera (in the viewfinder display the wee vertical line moves left and right as you move the thumbwheel through the aperture settings)

In the light conditions at that point this meant using about f14. I didn't like the result of f14 as it gave off huge starbursts from the streetlighting. So I opened up the aperture to f5 - this gave me 10 seconds of exposure which turned out to be OK as it allowed a couple of cars to be picked out as they stood still for most of the exposure time.

As time passed and the sky darkened until it was no lighter than the rest of the scene I removed the grad' filter then later still the 3 stop filter too.

Looking through all the images now I can see that there is definitely a special time when the level of light in the sky is just right. Earlier, the detail revealed in shadowy places is too much for this type of photograph - later, the sky is a rather featureless dark blue.

Overal I am pleased with my result tonight. Its not a great photo but the idea was to find out how best to achieve this type of shot and I feel I have moved some way toward that goal.

In a few more weeks time this shot will be possible when people are still at work in the building and there will be lots of folk walking home along the bridge. If it was wet then there may be some nice reflected highlights on the wet tarmac (though the sky would be lost if it was raining heavily)

The tree which I allowed to be in front of the tower still has many leaves on it today, but once it is an absolute skeleton I would probably move two or three metres down so it completely fronts the building.

Have great weekend BLippers