Night Photography

Yesterday evening, I was driving home when I noticed another one of those snow-melt puddles that collect all over the road. They make great reflective surfaces, but I saw that it looked even better at night; almost like a perfect mirror. As soon as I got home, I grabbed my gear and headed to the nearest suitable location.







click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 5 seconds
ISO: 80
Tripod


It turned out really nicely, I think. I completely ignored my light meter; it doesn't know what I want. The composition worked out well, and I'm glad to have a rock-solid tripod to hold my camera for really long exposures like this. Even at 5 seconds, I believe this was "underexposed" by about a stop.

In hindsight, maybe a slightly higher ISO would have worked for this. I really wanted to bring out the texture and contrast between the reflective areas of wet pavement and the shadows in the same pavement. On the other hand, the black would have been way more grainy than I wanted it. Maybe 80 was the way to go, but next time I'll be trying various ISOs.

I did almost nothing in PP. Bumped the contrast up by 3%, and added a somewhat large, but still rather unnoticeable vignette.

Anyway, this is my rebellious "break-all-the-rules" photo attempt. Severely underexposed, the histogram looks terrible, and I added a giant obvious vignette (which doesn't really count as rule-breaking, but it's definitely personal-code breaking).

Inspired by Weekend Reflections.