Very light night shots. Long exposures for C&C

[Tight Knot]

Hi all,

Here are a few photos of night shots taken, no extra light added, just long exposures.
Any C&C would be appreciated.
Thanks all.

1.



2.
This was taken with lightning in the clouds (lightning wasn't visible, just the highlights in the clouds)



3



4



5



6

 

[cayto]

#1 I like the light on the left in the buildings, gives another intensity to the picture. On the left there is a lot of noise, but if you don't used any other light...

#2 Don't like very much the light in this one. I think the picture is a little underexposed... On the left, there is an element that disturbs a little the composition

#3 With no artificial light you will always get a lot of noise...and this is an example of that is true Good reflexions on the water!

#4 This angle more open i think works better in this place, many elements, and like this they are in a context

#5 Much better than the others, but same comment for the noise on the left. Nice light on the right.

#6 In my opinion the best picture of this set. Lovely framework and composition, the refletions on the water are beatiful. And you can remove the light of the plane on the left

And that's all, just my 2 cents eheh

 

[JoshuaSimPhotography]

Yeah, number 2 is great, cayto, what does the 2 cents reference mean

 

[rokvi]

#1 and 5 have the strongest compositions IMHO

# 6 Is nice, though I would like to have seen a little more sky.

Otherwise nice set, hope to see more.

 

[cayto]

Yeah, number 2 is great, cayto, what does the 2 cents reference mean

I want to say that is just my opinion :mrgreen:

 

[JoshuaSimPhotography]

Hahaha! Dont really get the relativity to it, but thx!

 

[PinkDoor]

Hahaha! Dont really get the relativity to it, but thx!

Really? They don't say that Down Under? It's a phrase "Just my 2 cents". . . education opportunity: My two cents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Tight Knot - I love #6! That air plane making the turn is awesome! Beautiful shot!

 

[Tight Knot]

#1 I like the light on the left in the buildings, gives another intensity to the picture. On the left there is a lot of noise, but if you don't used any other light...

#2 Don't like very much the light in this one. I think the picture is a little underexposed... On the left, there is an element that disturbs a little the composition

#3 With no artificial light you will always get a lot of noise...and this is an example of that is true Good reflexions on the water!

#4 This angle more open i think works better in this place, many elements, and like this they are in a context

#5 Much better than the others, but same comment for the noise on the left. Nice light on the right.

#6 In my opinion the best picture of this set. Lovely framework and composition, the refletions on the water are beatiful. And you can remove the light of the plane on the left

And that's all, just my 2 cents eheh

Thanks for such a detailed C&C Cayto

These photos were taken on ISO 200 and fairly long exposures, so unfortunately there is a lot of noise. Oh well, one day when I can afford a better camera.
#6, I LOVE the airplane lights. I think it gives the shot extra "character".

thanks again.

 

[Tight Knot]

Yeah, number 2 is great, cayto, what does the 2 cents reference mean

Thanks Joshua.

 

[Tight Knot]

Thanks Roki. Unfortunately, i don't have a wider angle lens, otherwise I could have gotten the the sky, full reflection in the water and the buildings on either side. So I decided to capture the full reflections instead. I think it still works, but maybe would have been better with more sky.

 

[Tight Knot]

Hahaha! Dont really get the relativity to it, but thx!

Really? They don't say that Down Under? It's a phrase "Just my 2 cents". . . education opportunity: My two cents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Tight Knot - I love #6! That air plane making the turn is awesome! Beautiful shot!

Thanks Pink, any critique on the others?

 

[Derrel]

My comment is more about your overall "approach" to this set of nocturnes. What I like to see in most shots of this type is something substantial, and interesting, in the foreground of the photo. In these shots, what you have is typically some architecture, and then a pretty substantial expanse of water,with nothing "in" or "on" the water to look at. For example, in shot #5, there is a small dock on the right hand side. Now THAT offers a foreground subject of interest, but it is too small to be of major interest. Instead of taking the wide-angle view of these scenes, what I would like to see is "something" of interest in among all that dark water. So, that would mean moving the camera much closer to some kind of foreground object OR using a longer focal length lens, to show much,much LESS foreground, and thus magnify the physical image size of the objects in the background. I think you are using too short of a lens focal length and are not building a careful,studied "composition" with interesting and visually-rewarding foreground elements. These are more over-all views of places. What I want to see are photographs of things that make up these places. Like that foreground dock in #5--that is off-centered and too small to counteract all that black water on the left. Had you moved much closer to the dock OR zoomed in and cropped out 50-75% of the black water, the shot would have been much more-rewarding, and actually probably quite compelling.

"Think foreground object." The same goes for silhouettes and sunset photos--always,always,always try to look for good,interesting,substantial foreground elements when creating silhouette or sunset/sunrise type shots.

 

[Tight Knot]

Thanks so much Derrel,

Sounds like great advice. How about this one? The original is the same photo, but I had removed the foreground object, because I felt it stopped the eye from traveling forward with the leading lines.
What do you think?
Plus, sometimes, there is no foreground object, would you forgo on the shot, or take it anyway?

 

[rokvi]

Hahaha! Dont really get the relativity to it, but thx!

Really? They don't say that Down Under? It's a phrase "Just my 2 cents". . . education opportunity: My two cents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Tight Knot - I love #6! That air plane making the turn is awesome! Beautiful shot!

Its an age thing

 

[Derrel]

Shot #6 represents a bit of a departure from the others. In #6, the canal IS THE SUBJECT!!!! in that photo, the open canal, flanked by the buildings "is the subject"...in the other photos, what we have is open water, and far-away buildings.

So, the removal of the dock in shot #6 makes sense...at least as shown in the follow-up posted picture; cloning out the dock there made sense. The challenge however, in the other pictures, would be to somehow, FIND a good, interesting foreground object,and to MAKE it appear 1)interesting and 2)integrated with the composition. I use the word "MAKE" in caps because one can "make" a foreground object be larger,and prominent by use of 1) camera positoning (both distance and angle and height) and 2) lens focal length selection.

The single,biggest problem most people have with landscapes is using too short of a focal length and trying to "show it all"...that seldom works because in real-life the scene is there, and impressive. In a photo, a wide-angle view often means that the ostensible main subject appears very small, and far away. My suggestions are to use longer focal lengths, to narrow your vision, and to work to find a way to integrate some kind of interesting foreground objects into the photos. OR, to simply eliminate big,dark,blank spaces, and use longer lenses and zoom in to show BIGGER, and thus more visually-interesting things. Like in the canal photo, #6: you could also have shot that as a tall,and shown us only ONE side of the cityscape, but with the buildings 3x bigger and clearer. I would probably have enjoyed all of these shots much more with 80% of the dark water eliminated and 3-4x larger architecture shown in the final shots.

Composition is about the best utilization of the entire picture area. There are not many real rules. Only concepts. In photography, the photographer's choice of 1) camera position and 2) FOCAL LENGTH in huge part, determine what his camera will SHOW to the viewer. When using wide angle lenses, their rendering, their "drawing" of the light rays, makes the stuff in the background appear very SMALL, and thus, un-interesting to a viewer who was not there and who has ZERO emotional attachment to the scene. I am spending this much time and effort on writing this because I see these types of landscape shots all the time; they are of interest to those who SHOT them, but to viewers who were not at the scene, we want something "different" as our visual reward...we want to see "things"...not just "scenes".