Foster City Skyline

Tech Info: Single exposure with Nikon D300s using 50mm prime, ISO 200, f/5.6 for 15 sec with +1EV

Another friend of mine got bitten by the shutter bug, a Nikon D7000 to be precise. He took a long time to get a tripod and finally when he did, it was a good one. I remember when I got my first tripod; all the excitement of trying out new gear and I was so eager to go out that I would force my wife to visit places that she didn’t even want to think about. But now I’ve got couple of friends who are all showing some interest in getting into this. My wife is definitely pleased about that 🙂

On a saturday evening, my friend noticed the golden glow and the sky promises some good sunset, so he gave a shout for a shoot. When I get a call to go out for a shoot, most likely you’ll hear an emphatic yes from me (of course family commitments and other things do come into play), but I’ll push for that outing to happen. So the moment I got the call, I said yes and looked out. The sky was just gorgeous at that very moment, which meant we were too late to even think about sunset shots. We still wanted to try something and we went to a nearby park to at least catch some blue hour shots.

The thing which I like these days is that when a location or place is discussed and if I’m somewhat familiar with it, then my mind starts to think in terms of compositions for the scene. Its like it has got a brain of its own and is forming all kinds of pre-conceived images. On one hand this is good as its kinda preparing me mentally, but on the other hand, I’ve so many things to try and want to do all of them – or at least as much as I can squeeze in the amount of time we are going to spend. This creates a problem – all in my head. Its like 2 guys just jumped into a boxing ring and starting to take punches at each other.

I’m not sure if its because of the age or something, sense prevails in the end and I just go with couple of them in the mind and one simple thought from a famous photographer clouds the mind – lets see what the scene holds for us. Its so true as there are so many variables which needs to click at the right moment. Due to this nature, 90% of the time, there’ll be surprises. We can only be prepared if we prepare ourselves for “surprises”.

The above shot is actually a frame out of 7 that I shot as a sequence to try out some nighttime HDRs. If you are wondering what that is, you might find my earlier post 10 Questions on HDR useful. On any other day I wouldn’t have even bothered to process this one, but 2011 is a year that I’m going to go easy on me critically.

Processing:

1. Import the raw image into Lightroom and do basic adjustments. For this one, I messed around with white balance.
2. Export the image to Photoshop and do a clean up on the sky and a slight crop. There were tiny streaks and if I had noticed it out there, then would have attempted a star trail.
3. Resized the image for web.
4. Applied smart sharpen filter
5. Applied border, copyright and saved as jpeg.
6. Added metada in Bridge.

Before:

After: