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| Vets Hall, Hollister California |
Of course the weather decided not to cooperate, and with a deadline looming I was watching the sky every evening for several weeks. Finally one evening the sky to a deep crystal blue color with a few wispy white clouds. At the time I was sitting on my back deck and well into a bottle of red wine and a fine cigar when I looked up and saw these conditions forming. I apologized to my friends, grabbed a camera and tripod and off I went.
The challenge of photographing buildings is that in photographs they look like, well, buildings. There are many types of architectural photographs that catch my eye; close up detail shots, perspective shots taken from far away with a long lens, close up shots taken with a fancy tilt/shift lens. I learned of these “blue light” shots several years ago when I was taking a lot of real estate photos. The trick is to catch the light at some balancing point between the light on your subject and the light in the sky. For several minutes the light coming off your building subject will balance with the soft light of evening. And, if the sky is cloud free with no haze you will see this soft blue light just before dark.
Its best to frame your shot early, just as evening begins and then take a few shots every 3 to 5 minutes and to check the lighting. The sky will move from being over exposed to balancing with the landscape. I set exposure by watching the histogram and the highlights for “blinkies.”
I shot several images on the D700, 17-35mm f2.8, ISO400 at f8 and 17mm, trying ¼ to 2 second exposures. The 1 second exposure came out the best and was used for single image processing. I also shot several 1 stop bracket series adjusting exposure only. I plugged these into Photomatrix Pro and used exposure fusion. I ended up enjoying the single exposure best (I usually do over HDR) but both single and blended images were acceptable. Post processing was performed in Photoshop CS6 and Nik Viveza for color, contract and selective exposure, then Nik Define for noise and Nik Sharpen. A 1:2 crop was applied to the final image.
The challenge of photographing buildings is that in photographs they look like, well, buildings. There are many types of architectural photographs that catch my eye; close up detail shots, perspective shots taken from far away with a long lens, close up shots taken with a fancy tilt/shift lens. I learned of these “blue light” shots several years ago when I was taking a lot of real estate photos. The trick is to catch the light at some balancing point between the light on your subject and the light in the sky. For several minutes the light coming off your building subject will balance with the soft light of evening. And, if the sky is cloud free with no haze you will see this soft blue light just before dark.
Its best to frame your shot early, just as evening begins and then take a few shots every 3 to 5 minutes and to check the lighting. The sky will move from being over exposed to balancing with the landscape. I set exposure by watching the histogram and the highlights for “blinkies.”
I shot several images on the D700, 17-35mm f2.8, ISO400 at f8 and 17mm, trying ¼ to 2 second exposures. The 1 second exposure came out the best and was used for single image processing. I also shot several 1 stop bracket series adjusting exposure only. I plugged these into Photomatrix Pro and used exposure fusion. I ended up enjoying the single exposure best (I usually do over HDR) but both single and blended images were acceptable. Post processing was performed in Photoshop CS6 and Nik Viveza for color, contract and selective exposure, then Nik Define for noise and Nik Sharpen. A 1:2 crop was applied to the final image.
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