Night Photography: Empty City at Dawn (B&W)
Yesterday I took a walk through the city from about 4am to sunrise, in an attempt to catch the city during the dawn hours. I highly recommend everyone this at some point, as it offers a unique glimpse of the world just before it wakes up. The peace and quiet of empty streets as the sky starts to brighten is a magical experience.
I left just as a thunderstorm was leaving and was greeted by fantastic reflections. The plan was to scout out an area and experiment with night photography, so I can feel comfortable in this environment when I return with my analogue equipment (where every image costs me money). Since I was mainly scouting and time was running out, I left my camera bag and only took the most important equipment: My Minolta light meter with a spot-meter adapter, a Calumet tripod and a Fuji XT-10 with an adaptor and a C/Y Carl Zeiss Distagon 28mm, f/2.8 lens. Factoring in the crop factor that left me with roughly a 42mm full frame equivalent. To make the most of the reflections I slapped a circular polarizer on the end of the lens and left it there.
The overall settings were pretty simple:
*I tried to keep ISO as low as possible
*Whenever necessary I bumped up dynamic range to 200, requiring a minimum of ISO-400
*Aperture and shutter speed were adjusted manually on the fly
*The camera was set to "B&W with red filter" film simulation
*I shot JPG and used the cameras internal contrast settings to boost highlights and shadows
*To prevent camera shake I used a 2 second timer on every shot
Here are some of the images I took with their associated settings, as usual completely unedited:
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10s, ISO-200
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15s, ISO-400
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20s, ISO-400
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15s, ISO-400
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20s, ISO-400
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20s, ISO-400
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1/8s, ISO-800
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1/10s, ISO-800
As I was shooting with a manual lens there is no EXIF-data for the aperture.
this is awesome! you should create a story from a series of night photos
I intend to do some more night photography and possibly create a small body of work around it. Quick question, does the thumbnail show up for you?
Very nice pictures i like them all!
Thank you very much. This was a bit of an experiment, but I think it turned out quite well.
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I found your pictures very nice. Empty silent roads could be very inspiring for a writer. Vote and follow.
Glad you like them. I think they have a kind of meditative quality to them.
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i love this low light and night series. love to go with a camera and to shot a life of the night streets and places too.
Thank you. I quite enjoy being out at night. It's nice and quiet and you have all the time in the world to take your pictures. Some angles (like from the middle of the road) are impossible during the day but easily done at night.
indeed ! my special love to walk and to shoot during rainy nights - wet surfaces double the amount of reflections and everything just shain and takes a form :-)
Exactly! I had the same idea when I took those photos.