I was out for dinner in North Sydney with family last night and was driving home by myself. My husband is away with work, so with no one to come home to I figured I’d take advantage of my new 24mm lens and the tripod in the car and take some night shots. Silly me: the bit of the tripod that screws into the camera was at home, so I had to hold the camera on the top of the tripod. So I didn’t get the ideal exposure, but it’s still a pretty outlook.
Check out the birds (or bats?) flying around the top of the nearest pylon!
- Aperture: ƒ/6.3
- Camera: NIKON D50
- Taken: 24 September, 2009
- Focal length: 24mm
- ISO: 200
- Location: 33° 50.87′ 0″ S 151° 12.73′ 0″ E
- Shutter speed: 2.5s
Dear Kristarella, I love the fact that you tell the story which made the very picture real. I got here from twitter and because I’m new there I tend to click just everything to get all the juice, mhhhh.
So. The photograph is a nice shot. But I think it has flaws in composition because it lacks an unique (and on the other hand: widespread, pleasing the eyes) look. I am of course interested whether the blurs are birds or bats but the rest of the image isn’t catching me. I’d suggest you shoot such a situation the vertical way, beginning with the bridges pylon and then emerging to the skys 😉
To make a long story shorter: I will return to your image archives to talk with either you or your pictures again.
Bye, Frederik
Knowing Sydney, probably bats! Since you’ve asked for a critique I’ll just say that the biggest problem with the picture is just that there is a lot going on, other than the bridge.
You were alone at night, so you definitely don’t want to be wandering around too much, but the trees in the forground, and the building and cars off to the right are a bit distracting.
The way the light catches the bridge is nice, but there’s one part that doesn’t seem to get any light, which doesn’t look as appealing to the eye.
I think if you could get closer to the water, and in front and to the right of the bridge, you’d be able to get a nicer composition, and probably get a glimpse of the opera house, which looks amazing at night. I’m not too familiar with that side of the bridge, so I’m not sure how easy it would be, though.
Thanks for sharing!
Frederick — thanks for visiting and your feedback! I think you and Kyle are the first to attempt real constructive criticism here (yay!).
I’ve shot the bridge vertical before. It was hard to frame with my 50mm from that viewpoint, the 24mm would be able to capture more sky, but I think it’s impossible to lose the trees. Perhaps minimising the shadows would be less distracting though.
Your advise is much appreciated! Perhaps I’ll get another chance soon to go down with my tripod in one piece so that I can try some more compositions.
Kyle — My husband reckoned bats too, although I’m sure once I saw the same thing and tried really hard to see what they were and came away thinking they were gulls… Don’t know though.
Thanks for the feedback! I would love to get some closer angles and go beside and underneath the bridge. I didn’t bother trying because I was missing an essential piece of my tripod, but I think you’re right about it being a better vantage point. Perhaps moving closer to get rid of some of the extra stuff. Although part of me, for the purposes of that shot, liked getting a bit more of what was going on in the area as well… not just the bridge, but city life (kind of fails with no people around and that ugly building on the right).
I think down to the left of the bridge there is a bit more space to get the angle up. I’m not sure if the same row of lights is there though. You can definitely shoot the Opera House from down there too: the last two photos in this post were from down there.
Nice shot. I love night photography. I’ve been looking at you pictures for a while, and what I see is your eye for composition. You didn’t say if you shot it RAW. I think RAW is the best thing since white bread. In my opinion, this picture needs to have the both highlights (in fact the lights) and blacks with more detail. One great way to work with that is using LAB mode in PhotoShop. You can also mask the extremes and “make” the picture with a much broader tone scale using Curves – or Levels. Then change back to RGB.
I mostly work with B&W. I started way back in the early eighties, spent many hours in a darkroom and worked a lot with a view camera. Only about five years or so back I went digital and PhotoShop. And I’ve learned to love it. Having a background in pro photography has made the switch much easier.
I do like your work, and will be back as often as possible to look again.
All the best.
Hal — Yes indeed, I did shoot it in RAW 🙂 I think all my shots since March 2008 have been RAW. I love the flexibility it provides.
It may sound stupid, but I don’t have Photoshop. So far I’ve been able to do all the graphic work I want using GIMP and Inkscape, but that means I don’t have LAB mode. I’ve seen some unique LAB processed images and thought it would be cool, but never enough to warrant spending the money.
I loved the darkroom when I was in school. I spent a good number of recesses and lunches in there developing photos. I pretty much stopped shooting for about a year and half when I left school because it’s not as fun if you don’t develop it yourself. Then started my interest in digital photography (much of which you can see right here on this blog).
Do you have a collection of photos anywhere online?
Not at all stupid. A friend of mine does wonderful work with Paint Shop Pro. PhotoShop is initially expensive, but I upgrade about every two / three versions, and the cost is not too terrible.
At this time the only thing I have online are pics I used in blog posts. After reading your reply, and my wife
naggingafter me to put some work up, I’m going to do just that. I do hope you will have a look when I get this done. I always value the opinion of a fellow Photog.Incidentally, I found your site because I bought Thesis. I was absolutely frustrated with it at first – now I love it. I have followed some of your tutorials, one of the reasons I decided to stick with it. I really like the way you integrate your photo work with other parts of your site. This is my thought, to be a bit of a copycat and add a gallery to an existing site.
Don’t know if you use Twitter – I am on Twitter at: ohal
Wow, how enticing a “simple” picture discussion can be! I subscribed to the comments and then saw Hal mentioning a friend using PSP. I used to work with it for about 5 years but recently I realized that Paint.net is just perfect for most of my needs. Well, I do not perform exhausting photo retouching but for some artworks and banners and buttons its perfect.
I’m spamming this story because I came here from twitter (due to Thesis) and then saw this photograph. My monitor gamma is quite low so I decided to enlighten this very image with Paint Shop Pro (I mean: increase gamma values). Otherwise I would not have seen the gulls, bats, aliens floating beneath the pylon in the first place 😉
Sorry guys, you must have thought I’d run out on ya!
Hal — I did a significant part of my high school visual arts major work with Paint Shop Pro. My digital skills were more limited at the time, but that was me, not the software. I think if you work Photoshop into your workflow it’s probably worth the cost, especially if you use Lightroom as well and have that integration. I downloaded the trial of PS CS4 and I used it to view a complex PSD design I was porting to Thesis and to get the layers out of that, but for everything else I was still going back to GIMP because I knew how to use GIMP. I found Photoshop overwhelming, I would need time to get used to it.
Frederick — Always a problem with online work: everyone’s monitors are different. Sometimes I will send people mock-ups of work and they think blues are blacks and I end up making things much brighter than I would have wanted. It’s always hard for me to know how to display my images online and what’s going to happen when they get printed as well…