Sep 16, 2013

Behind a Favorite Boston Skyline Photography Image

The other night I had a chance to explore a new Boston skyline location that I had on my bucket list for many years. The evening light was beautiful and a clear blue sky was expected. While driving to the location I made multiple stops on Memorial Drive and captured the Boston skyline multiple times at various lights. I ended up near Charlestown where I easily found parking near the target location. I walked around a bit while twilight was fast approaching. I knew there was not much time left but I was determined to find a spot that allowed me to capture my vision. It turned out that the best location to capture the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, the Custom House of Boston, One International Place and parts of the TD Bank North Garden in one image was only steps away from my parking spot. I set up tripod and equipped my camera with a 70-200mm and 1.4x tele converter, making it an approximately 420 telezoom lens. Landscape versus Portrait format was my second decision but only to be a no-brainer as a horizontal format did not work that night. There might be a different spot for that but from where I was it would have had too many distracting elements like street lanterns or trees in the picture. Once I adjusted lens to my final composition I battled another challenge: cars driving past close and fast providing some unwanted camera shake and eventual picture blur. To overcome this obstacle I had to wait a couple of times until no cars were flying by and that made the difference for the 2 images that were sharp, crisp and of high quality. As usual the magic of twilight only lasted a few minutes but I ended up with a couple of useable images despite the obvious challenges. 

Aperture in this Beantown cityscape image was set to f/11 with an ISO200 setting allowing for an exposure time of 6 seconds. During the digital post processing I followed my usual workflow and eliminated dust spots, minimally adjusted lighting, contrast, color saturation before sharpening the final Boston photography image Boston Tall and Strong.


Good light and happy photo making!

2 comments:

  1. Your blog is awfully appealing. Your workshop is tremendous. I desire to be present there. I am contented with your post. I will visit you for more update. Thanks!
    Surf Photography Posters

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  2. Thanks very much for commenting on my Boston skyline photography artwork and latest cityscape gallery addition ~ so glad you like this image Moshin! I love to share my photography knowledge and hope my photographs inspire ~ looking forward hearing from you. My best, Juergen
    www.RothGalleries.com

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