Posted by danthro (Suburbia, United States) on 6 January 2008 in Cityscape & Urban and Portfolio.
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Nice - love those deserted parking lots...
6 Jan 2008 8:50am
spooky stuff! :-)
6 Jan 2008 1:34pm
I just looked at your profile and saw that you appreciate substantive feedback (as do I), so...
I like the way this picture reveals more upon study: good composition and colour construction. I really like the way the white diagonal pulls one's eye into the picture and then up the lamppost. From there one can travel down the diagonal of lights to the left and into the foreground tree nicely paralleling the lamppost, or bounce across into the randomly spaced lights and trees on the right which give the sense that the parking lot goes endlessly on, hemmed in by darkness. The monochrome treatment adds to the atmosphere.
The lights seem slightly blurred though the trees and lines are clear. Was this due to an atmospheric effect, or is it something you did during post-processing? EFIX shows a relatively long exposure: did you use a tripod and/or high ISO?
With the comp, the only slightly distracting feature is wondering what happens to the top of the main lamppost - a little bit of black sky at the top would stop the eye from progressing out of the shot, but that's a minor quibble.
6 Jan 2008 1:45pm
@baobab: Thanks for the substantive feedback. I did use a high ISO (ISO 1000). What's EFIX? No, I don't think the blurring was an atmospheric effect, it was freezing outside but no fog, I think it's just grain I get in night shots, though this came out a lot clearer than my other attempts. I'm still working on trying to get clearer night shots, but ultimately I liked the effect in this particular case (though it wasn't on purpose). I don't have a tripod so I had to depend on how still I could hold my hands. The data from my camera says it was a 1/2 second exposure, but I don't think my camera (Sony Cybershot) allows me to control that specifically. I actually had to tone the grain down a bit by upping the shadows. That was also part of the reason I didn't include the top of the lamp that's in front, because it was making the shot too bright with my settings.
EFIX is the camera data that's stored with the image file and visible to the right of your image. For some reason Aminus3 doesn't display Nikon D70 [my camera] ISO data, but seems to do so for your camera... but I must have scanned past that.
Got it on the foreground light - that makes sense. The blurring is very cool and adds a sense of mystery / spookiness to the shot. It would feel very different - much more stark - if the lights were in sharp focus. Depending on where you are you can sometimes use other surfaces as stand-ins for a tripod. You just need a relatively flat stable surface - the top of a car might work in this case.
8 Jan 2008 6:49am
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SONY DSC-W551/2 secondF/2.8ISO 10007 mm
emptynightparkinglotdeserted
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