First attempt at a long exposure nighttime cityscape

[LifeIsOnTheWire]

Hey everyone. I went out the other night to practice doing some nighttime long exposure city scapes. Here is one shot I was satisfied with.

I'd appreciate any criticism, or suggestions.

I found that I was slightly over exposing the whiter parts of the picture, in order to get any detail out of some of the dimmer parts of the picture. Any thoughts?

The Provencher Bridge, in Winnipeg, Canada.


DSC_3839 by LifeIsOnTheWire, on Flickr

 

[ralphbrunt]

looks darn good to me but, im a noob and dont really know...

 

[fotofinish]

Looks really effective to me. Might be better if the LH side was not so dark and if the central tower was not centered in the field of view.

 

[Cyotheking]

I really like it. I agree with the above poster though.

 

[manaheim]

Looks like you got it spot-on.

You can look to the link in my sig for tips, but frankly... this is the best first try I've ever seen.

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Looks great. The over exposure in areas with bright lights will be common if you're trying to expose long enough to retract some detail from the darker areas of the scene. You can correct both overexposure and underexposure in selective areas of the image in post processing by using lightroom, photoshop or the like. When I shoot nights capes like this I always try to find a happy medium where my light areas will be slightly over exposed but to a degree I can control them in post processing and the darker areas just a bit dark but not so much that I can't bring out their details in post. A quick fix in photoshop for example would be to adjust (reduce) "highlights" for the entire image and that will dim those bright areas bringing out more detail. "Shadows" can then be adjusted to bring out detail in the darker parts of the image. If you have more time to spend then you can select the specific problem areas in your image and make adjustments from there.

 

[LifeIsOnTheWire]

A quick fix in photoshop for example would be to adjust (reduce) "highlights" for the entire image and that will dim those bright areas bringing out more detail. "Shadows" can then be adjusted to bring out detail in the darker parts of the image.

this is actually exactly what I did

highlights/shadows, exposure, brightness, and contrast are usually the only thing I touch in Lightroom. mostly because I am extremely colourblind, and I'm scared to touch anything else

thanks for the compliments everyone.