Assignment 2: Turning towards the Night

After shooting in clouded skies, open sunny skies, and dusk, I turned my thoughts to shooting in the fullness of night.  Normally I would pull out a tripod for such work, but given the requirement for some high ISO shots and also the flexibility of shooting with camera in hand, I decided to chance it and see what my 5D2 could achieve.  I selected my two current favorite lenses, my new 70-300mm f/4-5.6 and 35mm f/1.4.  The zoom has a pretty effective IS capability and offers around 4 stops improvement for hand holding, but still I was was going to have to crank the ISO substantially.

As with my prior shoots I have selected the high rise buildings in and around Arabella park, although this time I included some lower lying shots when using the 35mm.

First of all I shot a couple of approach shots, the first is ISO-1600, 1/15s and the second ISO-3200, 1/30s

Both of these images needed careful management of the white balance and some correction of colour caste to reduce the bright orange of the windows in the larger buildings.  Moving in closer I completed a few detail studies of the Hypohaus.  These are now very different, as the building is lit from within, meaning that the windows become the light source rather than the panels on the exterior.

 

The next shot attracts me due to its strong angular geometry and the strong dark/light contrasts

During this study, I have also looked at more abstract images that contain transparency.  The windows enable the juxtaposition of multiple forms

Switching to the 35mm and shooting wide angle I looked for geometries that appealed, the first two shots being dominated by triangles.  In both cases I struggled to remove strong colour castes from the lights around the area

Finally I found a pathway alongside a building with rhythmic lighting.  In this case I was able to get a decent white balance as the lights appear to be broader spectrum than those being used elsewhere

With this set, I now think that I have sufficient images to start building a sample set of 10-12 photographs prior to whittling down to the final set of 6.