In this episode I'll show you how I created midnight shot
in Quito Ecuador. Adorama TV presents exploring photography
with Mark Wallace where you'll learn innovative techniques
on shooting a wide range of photography here's your host
hi everybody welcome to another episode of exploring photography right here on
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well I'm here in Quito Ecuador and I got your couple days ago
and I wanted to shoot something of the city I just didn't know exactly what I
wanted to shoot
and so today I'm gonna walk you through the process of me creating this
image now when I travel I like to break up my shooting into two parts the first
part is scouting the second part is shooting
when I scout I'm really doing is trying to get a feel for the city
look and see what's interesting and figure out a plan for my shoots so
let's take a look at my scouting process
my day begin by exploring the city. I walked the streets listened to the sounds
looked for inspiration began thinking how to shoot images of
people so I spent time in Plaza grande just watching the locals and
getting a sense of the space
as I watched the crowds I decided it would be better to shoot the scene from
above
so I began to look for a higher vantage point. As I climbed
I began to see the city from a distance and decided a scenic photo would be
even better so I began to look for even higher ground
I found this walking bridge and I thought to be a fantastic place to shoot
you to see the city right here it's unobstructed by any power lines or
anything
but I also knew that it wasn't a great time to shoot so want to come back at
night or close to sunset
now that meant that I'm gonna be shooting in low light or maybe even in the dark
so I did in the daylight as I grab my camera
got a 16-35mm lens and I just sort of
figured out exactly where we shoot I've got my tripod I can set everything up
if I plan that in the daylight I wouldn't be fumbling around
so once I had this setup and figured out my composition I marked my position
on my GPS watch
and then headed back to the hotel to plan everything out but before we do
that
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using the GPS coordinates from my watch I was able to use the photographers
Ephemeris
to determine when sunset would be and where the light would fall in my exact
location
well at first I was discouraged because I learned that the Sun was gonna set
directly behind that hill
which means I wasn't gonna get that great golden hour effect that I really wanted
the Sun wasn't gonna be streaming across the rooftops
so check the local weather and learn that we're gonna have a really
overcast skies that turned out to be good news
because as the Sun was going over the hill would actually eliminate those skies
and would give me a nice well lit sky that could contrast
against the city lights below now I set up my tripod in the same position that I
had scouted
earlier and I'm using a Canon 16-35 millimeter lens
I set the at the camera to aperture priority mode
and set my aperture around f9 and that made sure that everything was
tack sharp and had great depth of field so that makes you can see every little
detail
now I got here about 30 minutes before sunset
and after everything was set up I shot a frame about every five to 10 minutes
now I made sure I got a lot of variety in the sky and how the light was
changing
I shot everything in raw so I can make sure I had a lot of a different post
production options as well
once I had everything done I loaded my photos into Lightroom and you can see how the
light
changes dramatically as I go through these this is the very first shot
the night this is about 15-20 minutes before
sun setting see it's really really bland compared to the last shot at the night
this is
about 30 minutes after sunset and you can see that the Sun is actually
behind the clouds or behind the mountains but still illuminating the sky
and this little red area right here is actually reflection
of the city lights themselves. So if we go back and look at some of the
that progression of the light you can see that
it is changing not so much at first were waiting for the Sun to go down waiting
for the Sun to go down
waiting for the Sun to go down right about here you can see the City changes
right there see all these lights come on and so there's nothing
here's the city lights and then we see things changing dramatically over the
next five or ten minutes
and things really really pop so this is the image that I chose
as a progress after this you can see that little bit more like
lava I think the reason I didn't choose these later images even though they're
pretty dramatic
is if I look at this when this, this is the one chose check out this
in this building right here you can still see all the details we have this
they don't like it just flowing into the lens but you can see
all the buildings everything has details they can really see the details of the
city
you see how tack sharp this is shooting f9 with that 16-35mm
lens
if I zip to some of these later images which I really like the color again
you can see that all these buildings here just washed out this
flare here's just a little bit too much and so I went back to the original you see these
are overexposed
if I played with exposure a little bit I was losing details in the sky so I went
back to
this image here as my winner and what i do to this image
pretty simple they are open up my name and develop module panel here
I'll show you exactly what I did it was just very very minimal
adjustments and so I change my exposure just a bit so about three quarters of a
stop
if I change that so its down just a bit increase my contrast a
touch really did the big changes I made here right by
opened up the highlights opened up the shadows we get details
here and City because I underexposed this in Lightroom
I wanted open up this sky a little bit more so I
increase the highlights there took the whites down
because we're getting some losing some details in this
the whites right here at the white's right here so i took that down
I left the blacks alone increase the clarity in the vibrance with just a
little bit more color
I change the color temperature just a bit so I change that to
about 5426 Calvin and adding it ended with a increased
the saturation of my blues because I want the sky to be a little bit more
dramatic
and then the last thing I did is I went down here and I
enabled my Lens Profile correction so that
so with this wide angle lens if I undo that you can see this looks a little bit
like it's and distorted and when I click that
click that again you can see that that flattens the image out, so that's really the only thing
that I did this to
image and here is the result
thank you so much for joining me for this episode of exploring photography
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thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you again next time
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