Lights At Night is not the topic of this week’s photo challenge, it’s actually “It’s Not This Time of Year Without…” but to me holiday lights at night mean that the Christmas season has arrived. It’s also perfect for a photo challenge because shooting at night is a challenge to me. Part of the problem is practice, in that I almost never do.
Something I decided to try on this shoot was to use the Kelvin temperature feature for my white balance. I was shooting just as the sun had set and was looking to capture those deep blues in the sky. Here is an article that explains Kelvin with a chart to give you an idea of what temperature you would need to use under various temperatures. This is one of the photos I captured:
ISO 800 50mm f/11 1/25
It’s got the blue sky and the lights, but I’m not too sold on the rest of it. So, I decided to edit a bit more and here is another version that I came up with:
ISO 800 50mm f/11 1/25
What I have done is created a black and white version and layered it over the original and then masked back in some of the color. Two other things I did was remove the neon reflection in the pub window and the red tail lights that are in the first version. Those are just two details that really bugged me.
What do you think of this second version? Feel free to leave a comment below. Do you have a favorite setting to use on your camera at night? I’d love to hear about it in the comments, and if you’ve blogged on that topic, feel free to leave a link.
Cheers!
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