cityscape

Vivid St. Petersburg Florida Downtown Skyline at Night

in

St. Petersburg Florida downtown skyline at night from The Pier - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 20 sec mounted on Induro CT214 tripod with Nikon MC-30 cable releaseIt is easy to make photography all about handheld daytime shots.  After all, one is outside more during the day than at night and cameras are mostly conveniently held in hand.  This is all the more reason to venture out at night, and all the more reason to buy a good tripod.  Want to do something radical with your photography?  Go out at night.  Put your DSLR on your tripod and leave it there.  These two actions will have dramatic effects on both how you make photographs and the photographs you produce.

Photography tip:  shoot at night; shoot on a tripod

Things are calmer at night, at least in St. Petersburg.  Making a photograph using a tripod is a calmer way of producing a shot than handholding the camera.  Night photography requires very long shutter speeds.  For the above image I kept the shutter open 20 seconds.  You cannot just go around shooting willy nilly when just one shot takes 20 seconds.  This is a good thing.  

Working at night on a tripod requires a lot of setup and previsualization before pushing the shutter.  I have not shot at night much in the past myself, but am really liking it and plan on doing it more, especially since earlier this year I bought a "no compromises" tripod that is simply a pleasure to use.  This kind of tripod just plain makes photography more fun.  Does it cost $600 for such a tripod?  Yes, it does.  Are there any cheaper "no compromises" tripods out there?  No, I could not find one.  Was it worth it?  Absolutely.

Please link to your night photography images in the comments below. 

  • Inquire about licensing or purchasing a fine art print of the above image
  • Read more photography tips
  • Reserve your own 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson with Jason today!

    • Binocular Viewer a relic of the past looks at the future

    in

    Binocular Viewer on The Pier in St. Petersburg Florida - to me a relic of the past - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm lens @ f/11 ISO 200 7-bracket HDR mounted on Induro CT214 tripod with cable releaseWhile teaching a DSLR Photography Lesson a student wanted to photograph that thing you see above.  Its proper name I could not even dream of at the time.  Even after giving it more thought, not until I visited its maker's website did it seem obvious:  this thing is called a binocular viewer.  To look upon one up close is to me to witness a relic of the past.  Something first encountered on a family trip as a child.  Some marker of a place of significance that is better seen up close.  

    I would guess few objects are made like a binocular viewer still is, its pedestal seemingly hewn from a solid piece of iron and the binoculars themselves cast from thick steel.  Few things seen in modern daily life seem as immutable.  I cannot imagine its exterior design has changed at all in fifty years.  The inner optics must have, but maybe not.  

    It also never occured to me to feed it a quarter and look through it.  25 cents somehow seems an unacceptable fortune to see something I already can.  There is no LCD screen or preview or marketing gimmick attached to the binocular viewer to pry a valuable and useful quarter from my pocket.  Yet, I felt immensely glad it was there, and continues to exist, like the feeling one has when coming across and old, solitary tree.

    Sunny Florida at f/11 project #02 - Downtown St Petersburg

    in

    Downtown St Petersburg is not exactly Manhattan, but then again I would not want it to be.

    Finally the "Sunny Florida at f/11" project continues.  When I was visualizing this photograph, I thought the large cloud above really dwarfed downtown St. Petersburg's minimal skyscrapers.  It seemed almost like some large, natural mothership looking down upon lesser, artificial creations.  So I composed the shot with the buildings very low in the frame to stress the largeness of the cloud even more.  

    Also, a first:  using Photoshop's "lens correct" filter.  This made all the buildings stand up straight, not just the one in the dead center.  To apply this filter in Photoshop CS4:  FILTER --> DISTORT --> LENS CORRECTION  Then use the Vertical Perspective slider toward the bottom until all the buildings stand up straight.  Thanks to Ken for first explaining this tip.

    In my mind I want the next photograph in this series to be of palm trees along the beach, a more traditional Florida landscape.  I will see what I can find.  If you have any tips for a location like this in the St. Petersburg/Clearwater areas, please let me know in the comments below.