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a light trail on the freeway,


and a sunset

I like the first light trails...

The second is a little to busy for my tastes. But sky has lovely colours.

MATT

I'm actually a bit the other way round.
I like the sunset, though I agree it is a bit cluttered in the foreground, but feel the lightscape is just wrong.
Not sure why. Perhaps it is over exposed with the road is too visible, or perhaps it is the bands running across the road. Or maybe it just needs a single set of red lights running the other way. Whatever it is, I just don't warm to the image.

I also find the freeway shot a bit bright. I think it would have more impact if there were more contrast between the road that the light trails.

The first of these images .... auto exposure, right?

Probably evaluative mode?

The problem here is that, as others have observed, it is over-exposed. What colour is the road, as represented in this image? What colour should it be?

What has happened is that the camera's metering system has worked against you in the making of this image. Its goal is to try to reduce every image to a neutral grey. That's nice for a typical image, but a night shot, being a night shot, should have some elements of black. Significantly so. The metering system has failed to acknowledge this, and in trying to reduce the blacks to grey, it needs to let more light hit the sensor, and thus over-expose the image.

Reducing the exposure would blacken the road surface, thereby increasing the apparent contrast between the light trails - both the white ones, as well as the red ones - and thus it would increase the dynamics of this image.

In the second image, I'm thinking that a PoV from a few meters towards the right would have the effect of moving the yacht's mast and rigging closer to the lh edge of the image. My thoughts are that these should be kept in the image, but moving them to the left would reduce the visual clutter that others have noted.

Is this the same yacht that kindly donated its mast to your car? If so, maybe also consider a similar shooting point from which that image was made, complete with the low angle and the timber from the wharf in the foreground.

to me, #1 looks like the iso was high or the shadow tool was used a bit much as it looks a bit soft and grainy ... perhaps the lens was used wide open? ... nice perspective though

#2 the rigging has taken up too much of the image but it has great colours in the sky

yep gstark same location as my car. i wasnt planning on getting a photo of the sunset but when i was packing my camera gear up i thought it would make a nice shot.

im going to reshoot the freeway, i want to see if i can get a group of mates both ways on the freeway and get them to zig zag over the road. so i can keep the long exposure just reduce the amount of light is coming into the camera?

auxr8220 wrote:im going to reshoot the freeway, i want to see if i can get a group of mates both ways on the freeway and get them to zig zag over the road.

There's obviously quite a bit of danger inherent in that sort of an exercise. You'd need to have the road totally clear of other traffic. And I mean totally clear: even traffic going in the opposite direction could be an issue, as they may be startled by what they see. Perhaps a word to the local boys in blue to ask them if they have any suggestions in helping you to achieve this in complete safety?

Alternatively, a closed road - I'm thinking in terms of hiring a racetrack - might be the best way to go.

Or maybe even find a large open parking lot at night. Not the same, I know, but I cannot emphasise too strongly the need to do this in absolute safety. And FWIW, my background in motor sports goes back even further than my background in photography.

so i can keep the long exposure just reduce the amount of light is coming into the camera?

While the short answer might might be yes, the real answer comes down to the quantum by which you do this.

There are basically just two ways that you can control the amount of light that reaches the sensor: time (shutter speed) and aperture (the size of the hole that lets the light hit the sensor). By making the aperture (size) smaller (which is a larger number - f/11, f/16, f/22), you reduce the light that is available for the sensor.

But you need to balance that in two ways.

The first of these is to achieve the correct exposure, and so, yes, to a large extent, that will achieve what you;re suggesting.

The second is to ensure that you get a pleasant lookign image, and in this instance, that will pertain, I suspect, to the apparent length of the light trails that one can see in the images. In this case, the longer the exposure time (slower shutter speed) the longer the trails, provided the vehicles are moving.

Now that raises for me the question of how long should those trails be? There's no correct answer to that question, except of course to say that it's however long you want them to be. My gut feel is that what I've seen in this image is that they're too long, but that's just my opinion, and in this realm, my opinin isn't all that important.

What is important is your opinion, and how you want the image to look. Given the cost of shooting a dozen images is just your time to shoot those dozen images, my best suggestion is that you do exactly that: shoot a dozen (or more) images. Use a variety of shutter speed and aperture combinations, and just see what works for you.

Play, and then play some more.

the exposure time was 30 seconds, trucks move very slowly down the hill as it is steep. and i wanted the light trail to be the length of the photo. i could possible move to a different location aswell i know of another couple where the trucks move alot faster.