Another night in the city of Brussels

[Dikkie1]

Brussel Centraal by Dirk Desmet, on Flickr


Bruxelles Central by Dirk Desmet, on Flickr


New apartments in a timeless architecture. by Dirk Desmet, on Flickr


Gotham City by Dirk Desmet, on Flickr

 

[bdbroker]

The third is my favorite

 

[Pav10566]

Great Pics! At what time of night did you take them? Usually that corner is always very busy with people and it looks relatively quiet...

 

[Dikkie1]

It was a sunday evening, around 18 pm .

It was still quite busy, but due to a long shuttertime, people don't seem to appear on the picture.

 

[Pav10566]

Interesting technique....wish I could do that in real life!
I guess you used a Tripod but what shuttertime though?

 

[Dikkie1]

Not sure anymore, was around 20 to 30 seconds. I set the aperture, and the shuttertime is automatic calculated. Iso 100.
Of course, with a small tripod.

 

[Pav10566]

Gratitude for the tip...I was lately thinking about doing night pictures of a close-by city as well, however I thought that with an aperture of f(1.2) I wouldn't need such a long shuttertime with Iso 200

 

[annamaria]

Third one is my fav too.

 

[Dikkie1]

Gratitude for the tip...I was lately thinking about doing night pictures of a close-by city as well, however I thought that with an aperture of f(1.2) I wouldn't need such a long shuttertime with Iso 200

Better to use a longer shuttertime, or a smaller aperture like F 22.
F 1.2 gives nice dof and bokeh, for portraits etc...
F 5.6 is mostly the sweet spot on the lens, the sharptest (depending on the lens)
F 8 and more gives a longer depth of field, and the further you to to F 22, gives you mostly stars in the lights.

If you don't have a tripod, put your camera on top of something else. You always find something.

Experiment with different aperture sizes, different shutter speeds or iso settings, and find the result you like the best!

 

[rlemert]

I see why people like #3, but I find #1 interesting because of the lights fringing the roof. They look like little natural gas flames - like the building is a giant grill or something.

 

[BrandonSCMedia]

I love the first one.

 

[Shipman]

The colors are incredible. I wish I had some critique but I really like them all.

 

[StefanCo]

I really like the colors. Did you have much photoshop work to get these or it is all 'real'?

 

[WCThomas]

Picture colors are amazing!!

 

[Dikkie1]

I really like the colors. Did you have much photoshop work to get these or it is all 'real'?

I use ACDSee as raw convertor, this is fantastic software to adjust some saturations and contrasts.
(I paid € 50 for it last summer in a promotion deal, kind of a big bang for the buck)
But in fact I didn't overdo it, there was blue hour, the colors were just right at the moment. If I waited a 10 minutes, it would have been too dark, and the colours wouldn't be that good anymore.

Photoshop I only use to add the border/frame and signature around the photo in an automated action.
I hope to be able to do that action with Gimp someday, so I can leave Photoshop alone.