Masterclass Assignment #1 - City Lights

The assignment from Chapter 1 of Tom Ang's Masterclass is "City Lights" - use the various light sources around the city at night to create your shot.  Below is some of my work from this chapter.  I used my DA 18-55mm and Samyang 8mm Fisheye for this assignment.  All photos were taken in downtown Wester Chester, PA.

Lessons learned: City lights provide a great backdrop for night time photography however, many technical issue arise when trying to determine proper exposure and white balance.  Unlike day light photography or indoor photography with controlled lighting, city lighting provides discrete points of light that usually do not illuminate the entire scene.  As a result, a technically correct exposure will most likely look underexposed to most viewers.  This is because a technically correct exposure will aim to preserve the highlights from the discrete light sources.  Notice that most of the photos below have slightly blown out highlights around the light source.  This was done by using +EV to bring out more detail in the dark region to produce a more balanced scene.  In addition, some city light sources frequently change color and intensity (i.e. traffic lights and passing cars).  This challenges our ability to properly meter a scence but at the same time presents the opportunity to capture motion through "painted light" (e.g. Photo#3).  When shooting night scenes, I recommend using a tripod  and the bracket setting on your camera.  A tripod will not only help in capturing shaper images at higher shutter speeds, it will also allow you to use a lower ISO setting which will provide you with more latitude in making PP adjustments without introducing unnecessary noise.  Bracketting will help nail the correct exposure for scenes where light is constantly changing.  Another useful point - shooting dimly lit city scenes such as these during or just after rainfall increases the tonal range of the photo.  The reflections from the wet street (#2 & #4) add highlights to areas that might normally be too dark to recover detail.  Obviously, you can't plan for this in most cases, but hopefully it will help you to think differently about shooting on rainy days...or nights.  Full size photos are available on my Flickr page.  Let me know what you think.