Saturday, December 5, 2009

City of Light

Yesterday evening downtown Brattleboro was lit up for the monthly first Friday Gallery Walk, a chance for local artists and craftspeople to show their work. Because of the coming holidays this was a particularly festive occasion. The sidewalks packed with revelers and street musicians were filling the air with their music.



This is a view down from a parking lot on the lit-up Centre Congregational Church on Main Street with the post office parking lot in the foreground. The sky reflects the bright lights from the streets and buildings. Taking this photos was a bit tricky as the dark areas required a slow shutter speed.  I balanced my camera on a chain link fence and in order to prevent camera shake used a remote control cable l to take the three photos for this composite.  I am pleased with the result: the dark sky as well as the highlights on the building and the white postal trucks are showing good detail.

Tomorrow I am planning to get back to birding, will take a trip to the coast if the forecast for sunshine tomorrow holds. Right now it doesn't look very promising with first-of-the-season light snow falling.

6 comments:

  1. Beautiful night shot. Its difficult to get the right exposure on lights at night but this is perfect. Well done!!

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  2. Thanks, Harold. It was a challenge and I enjoyed it; was actually surprised that there was no motion artifact.

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  3. Wow!! This shot is spectacular. I wouldn't know how to go about producing something like this.

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  4. Kelly, thanks for your comment. I had read about HDR imaging in a blog "StuckinCustom.com" and decided to try it. It's so much fun if you like working in Photoshop. You also need a program called Photomatix Pro.

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  5. ...I don't really know the ins and outs of Photoshop. I use Aperture for color/exposure. I only use Photoshop to size and crop, and to convert my images to JPEGs. I need to learn how to use it. My hubby, Rick, also knows how to superimpose the images, etc. I need to get cracking...and learn it!

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  6. If you have Photoshop CS2 or later you can use the "merge to HDR" function under File > Automate > Merge. You need image with 3 or more different exposure by using the autobracket function on your camera and play around with it. At some point cameras with a broader sensitivity range may become available and make HDR obsolete.

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