Monday, July 21, 2008

Seattle at night


The opportunity to photograph belly dancers brought me to Seattle the other day.  This was quite an interesting exercise, once I edit the images I'm thinking I will have a few keepers.

The opportunity to photograph the city on a clear night with a large moon rising was irresistible.I completely mis read the Yahoo map of seattle, or else I don't understand the Navy Altitude/Azimuth charts, or some of each.  I had not positioned myself properly to take advantage of the moonrise as I had hoped.  Oh well.  What I was able to do was photograph the city again from an area I've used before, the result is above.  I am quite impressed with this camera's abilities yet again.  I like this image very much.  It's different, better somehow from the other images from the same place, film or digital.

Technically I had the camera on a tripod of course, but I had the meter set to center weighted.  I reviewed the images with a loupe after shooting and could quickly see that they were overexposed, didn't think to try spot metering.  This shot was at a -3 EV, I think it's just about right.

A few interesting notes.  The dots in the sky are celestial objects, most are stars, the bright one in the middle of the sky is a planet.  Not sure which planet, Venus perhaps.  The streaks are airplanes taking off.  I am looking south and there are 2 active airports there, Boeing Field on the right side of the image and SeaTac towards the middle.  Aircraft flying north will usually turn just before reaching the city and I see there are 2 streaks from turning aircraft, the alternating green and red wing tip lights are visible.  Above and a bit to the right of the red roof is a glimpse of Mount Rainier.

2 comments:

Ronald said...

I like your comment about the exposure, indeed even less would have had the light be more dimmed down. But the overal efect of the picture is great and the cleanness and the sharpness in such a nightshot remains impressive t say the least!

Charles Maclauchlan said...

Thank you Ronald. I was struck by the lack of digital noise in the image. I have a similar shot with a bit less exposure. The city lights are more crisp but there's something about the blue in the sky on this image that i like.