NYC Night Skyline

Another rare attempt at a landscape. Let me know how successful this one is..


Thanks. Happy new year everyone.

I like it.

Was this handheld? Maybe a longer exposure, around 30 seconds, would have given a different look.

abhivg wrote in post #18232509
Was this handheld? Maybe a longer exposure, around 30 seconds, would have given a different look.

+1. The image could also be more engaging if it was shot as a vertical panorama at a longer focal length. Your 50-100 or 70-200 on a tripod & stopped down to f/11-16 would produce good results . The 9 blade aperture on these lenses should create 18 point stars which look nice in night shots. Best to shoot on a clear night, clouds usually end up horrendous orange or other unnatural colour from the city light dome.

Lee

I like the shot but on my monitor I see banding around the buildings.

I like it.
Perhaps it may benefit from a bit of a crop on the bottom? Make it more "widescreen"

work on your photoshop technique. I can see the brush marks you used to lighten the buildings.

You kinda got the old horizon in the middle of the frame problem. Crop some of the bottom of the image and get that horizon at a nice rule of thirds line.

I didn't have a tripod with me because this was during a family outing, hence the hand-held. I have to be very selective with shooting while out with the family because I don't want my husband to get annoyed at me and start complaining. This was a several hour trip and I took maybe 20 shots, most of them I only paused for a split second to take. Here, I had the luxury of a few minutes.


As for the brushstrokes, that's what I get for editing on my surface instead of the Mac, lol. Lesson learned.

But in the future I'll be able to go without such constraints.

Hi AT!

I think it's a great start. I understand about limitations, and given what you had, I think it came out fine.

I love your Manhattan skyline! Especially hand-held, the shutter speed wasn't a problem for you. Great job, AT!

Critique? Yes, I saw the brush strokes. You do what you have to do. But you also know you could have done this on your Mac. You can always redo the processing! Don't get rid of what you've got, but just make a copy and try things with that! When you get something better, go with that.

You can actually do some selective things with your cityscape images. Last spring I took some timed exposure images from Lincoln Harbor and found they still needed considerable retouching in Lightroom. I can show before and after images if you'd like, along with a description of what I did (though this is your thread so I won't post them otherwise). In essence, I brought up the general lighting of the image, and really brought up the water using the graduated filter (shortcut 'M'). Playing with your image a bit, I found I could raise the exposure on the water by 1.8 stops and it comes to life. Play with it in Lightroom and push it to the extremes, just to see what happens. While you may not wish to keep the extremes, it's good to see what happens.

On the location, if you can go a bit further down the waterfront (photo right), you can get across from 34th St. You get a nice urban canyon view toward the Empire State Building.

On shooting time, it appears you took this back in August at almost 10pm (according to Lightroom). If you can take the photo within the first 45 or so minutes after sunset, you can get some bluish light remaining in the sky, which will help make it more interesting.

In closing, one of my inspirational sites is 500px.com. Search for images such as "manhattan sunset" and refine your search as desired. See what's possible, and then go play!

I hope this helps!

mathogre wrote in post #18236983
Hi AT!

I think it's a great start. I understand about limitations, and given what you had, I think it came out fine.

I love your Manhattan skyline! Especially hand-held, the shutter speed wasn't a problem for you. Great job, AT!

Critique? Yes, I saw the brush strokes. You do what you have to do. But you also know you could have done this on your Mac. You can always redo the processing! Don't get rid of what you've got, but just make a copy and try things with that! When you get something better, go with that.

You can actually do some selective things with your cityscape images. Last spring I took some timed exposure images from Lincoln Harbor and found they still needed considerable retouching in Lightroom. I can show before and after images if you'd like, along with a description of what I did (though this is your thread so I won't post them otherwise). In essence, I brought up the general lighting of the image, and really brought up the water using the graduated filter (shortcut 'M'). Playing with your image a bit, I found I could raise the exposure on the water by 1.8 stops and it comes to life. Play with it in Lightroom and push it to the extremes, just to see what happens. While you may not wish to keep the extremes, it's good to see what happens.

On the location, if you can go a bit further down the waterfront (photo right), you can get across from 34th St. You get a nice urban canyon view toward the Empire State Building.

On shooting time, it appears you took this back in August at almost 10pm (according to Lightroom). If you can take the photo within the first 45 or so minutes after sunset, you can get some bluish light remaining in the sky, which will help make it more interesting.

In closing, one of my inspirational sites is 500px.com. Search for images such as "manhattan sunset" and refine your search as desired. See what's possible, and then go play!

I hope this helps!

Hmm.. the dates appear to be incorrect. This was from this past Monday. Yes, of course I'd love to see your examples! And I think I actually took the exposure overall way down, with more black, for a more artistic edit. Just playing around. I'd like to eventually get a good enough photo to print big. I know this one isn't there yet, but it's practice. Most likely for a night skyline I will have to upgrade to a D750 or D810 to be able to print large. The D500 and Sigma Art crop lenses are doing a commendable job for me but they have their limitations.

Thanks for the feedback.

Angela

Hi Angela!

On the dates, so much for Lightroom. Lol!

Here are the two images, before and after, taken over Memorial Day weekend last year. Overall exposure was raised 1.5, shadows 75, and the water was raised another 1.0 on exposure. While I made other adjustments, they were more a matter of fine tuning.

In the end, it's really what you want. You wanted the black down further, and the artist's view of what she wants to make for a photo is the top consideration! You will get it where you want it so you can print it big. I'd even suggest trying some small prints just so you can see what you might need to do with printing.

I hope this helps!

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/PJGj​P9

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/PJGj​M5

atsilverstein wrote in post #18236998
I'd like to eventually get a good enough photo to print big. I know this one isn't there yet, but it's practice. Most likely for a night skyline I will have to upgrade to a D750 or D810 to be able to print large. The D500 and Sigma Art crop lenses are doing a commendable job for me but they have their limitations."

Your current equipment should not be limiting the size of your prints. Here's an excerpt from an article on Magic Murals web site (https://www.magicmural​s.com/image-quality-guidelines/):

"Photographs should be taken at the highest resolution available on your digital camera. We recommend a minimum of 8 megapixel cameras for small to medium murals and a minimum of 12 megapixels for large size wall murals. Up-sampling (i.e. artificially increasing resolution using software such as Photoshop) will not increase the output quality of your wall mural. Digital SLR cameras take the best photos for high quality wall murals."

I had 20" x 30" prints made from an 8mp camera over 10 years ago. You should have no problems having large prints made with your current equipment providing you get the exposure correct.

I like the shot! I agree had you had a tripod you could of done a long exposure but when you have what you have you get what you get and you got a nice image!