I took to the city streets last-night and found myself on Dublin's Dockland. I wasn't prepared for the bitter cold breeze coming off the Liffey. The area was quiet between 10pm and 11pm, compared to the same spot during the day. The full moon was challenging to work with, especially with a wide-angle lens and my archenemy (lens-flare) visited for our usual dual. I took only 4 shots in total, each took about 10 minutes to compose and execute, this is one.
Photo: It was my aspiration to create a sync-flash effect (without the flash!), where motion is frozen during a long exposure. My exposure time was 15 seconds, so anything moving in the frame while the shutter was up would be a blur or invisible. To freeze the cars in the frame, I set-up beside traffic lights. A few test shots enabled me to get the exposure I wanted to preserve detail in the scene. Once this was done, I simply waited for the cars to come along and stop dead. Unfortunately I was unable to avoid the staggered approach of the cars, I didn't get an uninterrupted 15 second interval - thus the light trails on the taxi who came along about 10 seconds after the red car (try to envisage the image without the taxi, the red car would look like I caught and froze it in motion). At least now I know how to do it. Stay tuned for more results.
ISO 100. Single 15 second exposure @ f/11. Minimal post-processing, tweak to White Balance and Curve. Sharpened slightly using High Pass in PS.
