NYC Skyline at Night - C&C

mosu84 · Dec 28, 2008

Took a trip down to NYC and got some shots from across the river. It's only my second time trying night shots of skylines, any comments?

#1 - Panorama

#2 - Empire and New Yorker

#3 - Does anyone like this one? I'm having a debate with a family member about it.

Jaszek · Dec 29, 2008

Hey I see B&H (i think) lol.
Great shots. Love the reflections and the glossy water.

ShutterSpeed · Dec 29, 2008

WoW!

I wish I lived in a city with such great scenery. Northwest Arkansas certainly doesn't have it. Moving to Brazil soon, so hopefully when that happens I'll have you guys in awe over my pics. Would like to make some trips to the Amazon River, the beaches, etc..

LaFoto · Dec 29, 2008

Hey, that "New Yorker" came out well! It is so easy to overexpose there, or use too wide an aperture and have those letters unreadable. You did everything all right, methinks.

Good.

dtornabene1 · Dec 29, 2008

I like the first two, but something doesn't seem right with the railing in three. The fence is in focus. This leaves the beautiful skyline as a distraction, which puzzles me. It (the fence) just seems out of place because of the large aperture used. Hope this helps the debate?

-Nick

revilo · Dec 29, 2008

In 1), the near central placement of the horizon, with the cityscape above and the water below, gives a slightly frustrating composition. I assume you cropped this to give the panorama; so why not recrop, slightly more loosely, to give more sky? In my opinion, this would improve the image, though I think you've done a good job already.
2) I like a lot.
3), I would have liked to see more of the brightest reflection on the water - the fact that it is blocked by the fence is a shame, however petty this may seem. I think if you chose a slightly different position, and stopped down to get the buildings sharper, this would have turned out really well.
Well done, I like these.

a1157814a · Dec 29, 2008

i'm no pro but as a regular viewer, i feel like there is too much of the water half in the pic in the 1st pic.
and then for the 3rd picture, there is too much focus on the fence, i would prefer to see more of the city

mosu84 · Dec 29, 2008

a1157814a said:
i'm no pro but as a regular viewer, i feel like there is too much of the water half in the pic in the 1st pic.
and then for the 3rd picture, there is too much focus on the fence, i would prefer to see more of the city

Thanks everyone for the comments. Here is another crop of the panorama

manaheim · Dec 29, 2008

It looks like you are missing your focus with the panorama (and obviously the fence one, but maybe that one was intentional?). When taking night time pictures it's best to focus manually. When objects are at a distance, focus to inifinity on your lens. Be sure to check to see what inifinity on your lens is before your shoot- not all lenses are properly marked.

Also watch your horizons. The panorama is tilted ever so slightly clockwise. The fence one very much more so.

Back to your fence thing... it's great to have other objects in your foreground in these shots. It lends some interest, but in my opinion you have to be careful not to make the object in the foreground the primary subject. In this case, your fence is in focus and your skyline is not, so it makes the skyline very much secondary, which is probably not what you want.

There is also a natural tendency to want to underexpose night time shots to make everything look dark, because it's dark out... right?

Anyway, you want to err a bit on the side of overexposiing the shot so that you can see the details of the buildings more. Otherwise they become black masses that blend in with the night sky behind, with the exception of these little dots of light on them. I think you got it pretty near to perfect on #2 (I might have exposed it a hair more, but not much- the NEW YORKER just looks so perfect as it is and I wouldn't want to lose that). The panorama is a bit dark. The fence one is tough because I'd like to see th ebuildings on the left exposed more but there are two buildings on the right that are already WAY overexposed as it is, and I'd hate to push them further.

BTW, I HIGHLY recommend shooting in RAW... this allows you to deliberately overexpose by a couple of stops and then back it down a bit in post processing. It guarantees those details will be there for you. It also helps you deal with the variety of color temperatures, vs. letting the camera try to figure it out (or hassling with it when in the field).

Whatever the case, these are a great start. Night time shots are tricky and you've already accomplished a lot of good stuff with what you have and you have a WONDERFUL subject to work with. Keep at it!

mosu84 · Dec 29, 2008

manaheim said:
It looks like you are missing your focus with the panorama (and obviously the fence one, but maybe that one was intentional?). When taking night time pictures it's best to focus manually. When objects are at a distance, focus to inifinity on your lens. Be sure to check to see what inifinity on your lens is before your shoot- not all lenses are properly marked.

Also watch your horizons. The panorama is tilted ever so slightly clockwise. The fence one very much more so.

Back to your fence thing... it's great to have other objects in your foreground in these shots. It lends some interest, but in my opinion you have to be careful not to make the object in the foreground the primary subject. In this case, your fence is in focus and your skyline is not, so it makes the skyline very much secondary, which is probably not what you want.

There is also a natural tendency to want to underexpose night time shots to make everything look dark, because it's dark out... right? Anyway, you want to err a bit on the side of overexposiing the shot so that you can see the details of the buildings more. Otherwise they become black masses that blend in with the night sky behind, with the exception of these little dots of light on them. I think you got it pretty near to perfect on #2 (I might have exposed it a hair more, but not much- the NEW YORKER just looks so perfect as it is and I wouldn't want to lose that). The panorama is a bit dark. The fence one is tough because I'd like to see th ebuildings on the left exposed more but there are two buildings on the right that are already WAY overexposed as it is, and I'd hate to push them further.

BTW, I HIGHLY recommend shooting in RAW... this allows you to deliberately overexpose by a couple of stops and then back it down a bit in post processing. It guarantees those details will be there for you. It also helps you deal with the variety of color temperatures, vs. letting the camera try to figure it out (or hassling with it when in the field).

Whatever the case, these are a great start. Night time shots are tricky and you've already accomplished a lot of good stuff with what you have and you have a WONDERFUL subject to work with. Keep at it!

Thanks for the excellent feedback. As for shooting in RAW -- I shot these in RAW, but when it came time to create the panorama I was kind of confused as to what to do. Is there a way to stitch the panorama with RAW images that creates a RAW output panorama that I can manipulate all together so that I can expose all the segments together?

manaheim · Dec 30, 2008

I actually haven't played with stitching yet... it's next up on my list. My assumption is you'd want to process all the images pretty similarly to TIFFs (or whatever) and then stitch them.