One warm quiet night

[AnitaChong28]

1. in what area is critique to be sought?
Commends and guidance on photography.


2. what one hopes to achieve with the piece of work?
This is my 1st time trying out night shots. Trying to capture a quiet evening.

3. under what circumstance is the picture taken? (physical conditions/emotions)
Taken at 11:00pm. Warm and still evening. Not much action or activity.
Took this pic with a D600, using a 24-70mm lens and tripod.
70mm, f11, ISO100, 15s
no crop no photoshop. As shot as I wanted an open opinion.

4. what the critique seeker personally thinks of the picture.
The sky is too dark. Dont know how to improve the composition.
I feel I am technically not ready. No justice done to D600+24-70mm.
Definitely can do better.

 

[richiemccaw1]

I like the light trails. Some quick points from me before the seniors comment:
- Can consider making the horizon 1/3 of the picture instead of just slightly less than half.
- Picture does not look to be in focus, or is it?
- The light trails probably can be made to form a more significant portion of the picture since there does not appear to be anything else too interesting about the picture.
- Perhaps you can try shooting this during blue hour to see whether the sky would be more interesting.

Keep on trying =) We all start somewhere.

 

[zaren]

a few suggestions....
a) try taking the shot during the "blue hour" at around 7pm rather than at 11pm when the sky is black.
b) the top half of the photo is quite featureless and can be cropped away to a panorama
c) try HDR (high dynamic range) to expose for more details in the flats while not overexposing the bright light trails and road. composition wise- you might not want to break up the light trails with
dark clumps of trees.
d) try to achieve a sense of balance with the composition.

 

[AnitaChong28]

I like the light trails. Some quick points from me before the seniors comment:
- Can consider making the horizon 1/3 of the picture instead of just slightly less than half.
- Picture does not look to be in focus, or is it?
- The light trails probably can be made to form a more significant portion of the picture since there does not appear to be anything else too interesting about the picture.
- Perhaps you can try shooting this during blue hour to see whether the sky would be more interesting.

Keep on trying =) We all start somewhere.

Thank you for the comments and encouragement.

 

[AnitaChong28]

Thanks for the advice.
Will take some pic during blue hour.
Hopefully can improve.
apprec..

 

[paulboh87]

suggest u go to places like MBS and etc where it is easier to frame up for subjects into the composition. i feel it is too flat,
your dark is too dark but i guess longer exposure will make the light trails way too over exposure.

why not take pics with editing in mind?

i agree with the rest that the sky is too flat so next time if u have such a sky, try not to include too much of it and maybe do panorama.
btw i m also using d600, its has gd dynamic range recovery when editing raw from lightroom

 

[pettypoh]

hi,

for your image, i find the main issue for me isn't really the lighting conditions. it's actually more to do with "subjects of interests", so in a way also composition related

there's lots of activity in the image (e.g. lights in buildings, car trails, trees, roads, etc), but there was no specific emphasis on any of these within this single image

one possible suggestion would be to retry this shot at another angle and specifically zoom into and emphasise the car trails (either on the flyover or coming down marymount?)

 

[AnitaChong28]

Thank you all for the encouragements.
Will work on weakness..
cheers

 

[AnitaChong28]

Zaren I like the edited version. Did u use Lightroom? Can u pm me the settings?

 

[thoongeng]

Zaren I like the edited version. Did u use Lightroom? Can u pm me the settings?

Don't think mod Zaren uses lightroom...

My guesstimate of a starting point in Lightroom is to push the 'Exposure' slider to about +2 stops and 'Temperature' slider towards the blue side. Then decrease the Highlights and increase the Shadows as necessary.

I think it is better if you play around and understand what each slider in Lightroom does, so that when encountered with future images for editing you will know which sliders to adjust, rather than just using other's settings.

Just my 2 cents and thanks for sharing

 

[zaren]

Zaren I like the edited version. Did u use Lightroom? Can u pm me the settings?

Hi Anita, i used Photoscape and Gimp.