Nighttime at the docks, under the bridge over the river. This was a fun shoot, though anything at 3 A.M. is. I did three versions: one at 1/6, one at 3.2″, and this one at 30″. In the slower versions the water looks rippled and ugly, but with a longer exposure it’s beautifully smooth, and the streetlights turn to stars. You can see eight points to each light because my lens has eight aperture blades. If I’d have opened up all the way there would be no spikes, and if I opened up further …
Tag Archive: exposure
One thing about digital photography, a short-coming compared to film, is that you can’t recover from over-exposure (except somewhat using RAW format). So be sure to get it right the first time, because you can’t edit the detail back in. Note that in that photo, the white highlights in the sky aren’t actually clipped (if they were “clipped,” they’d be pure white), but if your monitor is too bright, you won’t be able to tell by sight. Same goes for you camera’s LCD screen. This is why you …

