I’m in New York this week for the annual PDN PhotoPlus Conference and brought my camera along in case I got the chance to shoot. Well, if you didn’t know already, I’m a sucker for a good long exposure scene. For me, anything with a strong (and not moving) foreground and a cool background, along with some moving water, makes a great long exposure photo.
Finding a Location
After doing some research on 500px.com, I stumbled across a location at the Brooklyn Bridge Park. Not really knowing much about it, I hopped on the subway to the High St. stop, and figured I’d see what I could find.
The Setup
After walking along the waterside about 30 minutes before sunset, I found these pilings that I’d seen in some other photos on 500px. I set up my tripod, my D800, and my 18-35mm lens. The first photos were kinda blah. For starters, if you’re shooting a skyline you really need to wait until well after sunset so you can see all of the lights on. And hopefully it’s a weekday, because you don’t tend to have as many lights on during the weekends. Oh, and sunset is best because you typically have more people that work late, rather than having a lot of lights on at sunrise when most people aren’t in the office yet.
Long Exposure
I used a Tiffen 3-stop ND filter to slow the shutter speed and really smooth out the water. I originally tried a 30 second exposure, with no ND filter once it got dark, but the water still wasn’t smooth enough. So I put the 3-stop ND filter on and ended up with a 90 second exposure. Oh, and I used the ND Timer app to help out with shutter speed times and it worked perfectly.
Once it got dark, it was hard to focus, so I used Live View, zoomed in on the skyline since it’s the most critical to the photo, and manually focussed.
(click to see the photo larger)
Post Processing
The post-work was pretty simple. I used Lightroom to adjust the overall exposure and tone (shadows, highlights, whites, blacks). I also used the Radial filter on the buildings (with negative exposure), so that they appear brighter and everything else is darker. From there, used onOne’s Perfect Effects 8 beta and the Dynamic Contrast settings to get that detailed/sharpened look to the photo.
That’s about it. If you’re at PhotoPlus make sure you check out my Photoshop Compositing Secrets class from 4pm-6pm today. And I’ll be speaking at the Sony booth on a panel from 11-12pm tomorrow (Friday). Have a good one!
I love teaching and photography... In that order. I feel that enjoying photography, and photo editing can get WAY too complicated. So my personal mission (and favorite thing to do), is to create education that simplifies the process of taking great photos, and how to edit them to get the results you’ve always wanted.
Hey Matt! I’m headed to Manhattan next week for a photo workshop, I’ll have at least one evening to myself, and I thought, “I want to recreate that shot that Matt did”. So, next week I’ll be making the attempt! Thanks for all your great posts!
Charlie
Hey matt, brilliant shot!
I’m only just learning the basics of photography. I’ve a question: How did you keep the building lights from becoming too bright while keeping the foreground bright enough? (If the ND filter and 90 second exposure are just enough to light up the buildings properly, wouldn’t the foreground be way too blacked out to brighten up any detail on lightroom?)
Hi Matt, I love this shot. I went to New York for the first time this past summer and was overwhelmed with all the opportunities to photograph. I started school for photography this fall and am loving every minute of it. I have known about Lightroom Killer Tips for a while now, but I just started following your personal blog. I find it really interesting and helpful to hear about your personal experiences photographing. I am still very early on in my career so I love playing around and trying to find what I’m drawn to photographically. Long exposure shots are so interesting to me. I really want to try some out, so thank you for your post(s) on the topic. I am very intrigued by northern lights and trying to capture them. Have you ever shot them and do you have any advice for photographing them?
Thanks again for all the awesome and informative posts!
Thanks Heidi – Nope, no northern lights for me yet. Hopefully one day soon though 😉
It’s a funny thing this came up in you’re blog. And in looking at the images, it begs to ask… How were you able to capture a night time shot, without really loosing details or blowing out the lights on the buildings?
I shoot a lot of nigh time exposures along the Detroit river. And some of them are near perfect. The one area that always causes issues is the blown out window lights, GM sign of the RenCen building etc.. So do you any pointers for obtaining a more even exposure across the board for images like these? I know this isn’t a fluke on you’re NY shot, as I was at the LR seminar in Toronto the morning after you had shot that images from around ward’s island, and you had little to no blow out on those either.
I’m shooting a D3 & D3s, so it’s not the equipment.
Hi John. I actually don’t even look at the lights on the buildings. There’s no salvageable or necessary detail in lights so there’s no reason to try to make them look good or recover detail when there is none. It’s kind of like shooting in to the sun – it should be white. For me, the same goes with lights.
Thank you so much for sharing yr experience. Is it possible to know f/ stop and exact focus point?
Hi Sergio – I shot at f/11 and I focussed on the city skyline in the background since that was the most critical point in the photo for me. Unsharp Mask in Photoshop handles the rest to make sure everything else looks sharp as well. Thanks 🙂
Thanks again. 🙂
Good stuff Matt. Like you, I love making nice long exposure images. I’ve also started using live view on my Canon 550D more and more these days as a focusing aid. I discovered something this morning that’s probably very obvious to most but I hadn’t thought of it. The 550D offers 5x and 10x magnification in Live View mode. I was already using these to get real precise focus, but I kept moving my gear head all around to get to the area I wanted to focus on. DOH! Just use the dial pad control buttons to move the focus point box on the LCD screen instead. What a help! Just thought I’d share that in case there were any other folks doing what I did.
Great image Matt. What f/ stop did you use for this image with the old pilings being in the forground?
Thanks Jim – I shot mostly at f/11 and focussed on the buildings in the background. I as I mentioned in another comment, I just sharpened the heck out of the rest of the image and the pilings will look sharp as well.
Matt,
Thanks, and thanks for all of the great content you create at Kelby Media Group.
Were you near the 35mm end of that lens?
Yup. I shot both at 18mm and 35mm and ended up liking the 35mm the most.
I’m not sure I would’ve known it was NYC if you hadn’t told me. That’s not a criticism just noting the fact. Though it does make me wonder how important is something like that when shooting a cityscape? Is it important for people to recognize and know the city or what?
Great image Matt. Thanks for the sharing and educating us.
EXCELLENT
Incredible shot! Thanks for telling us how!