Tag Archives: night

Blue Bridge

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A new Johnson Street bridge has recently opened across part of Victoria Harbour. It has replaced an old bridge that was apparently in bad condition. The new structure is a bascule bridge to allow larger boat traffic to access the inner areas of the harbor and it has a really cool design. While the bridge carries the road across the water, it has excellent access on either side for other users. The two sides carry both bike and foot traffic and they are wide enough to provide plenty of space for all users. There was plenty of foot traffic when I was there which might have had something to do with the Christmas Parade that evening.

In the evening, the bridge is well illuminated. The curvy nature of the structure provides lots of interesting details. The mechanism for raising the bridge is not concealed either so you can see the gear wheels involved in lifting it if you look below. On my walk back one evening I ended up spending a fair bit of time on the bridge because it provided so many possible angles to shoot it either to get the full bridge or to focus in on individual parts of it.

Radio Mast In Tokyo

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While I was staying in the same hotel as last time during my recent visit to Tokyo, I was on the opposite side of the hotel.  This gave me a view across to a large radio mast a couple of kilometers north of Minato.  In the early evening, the mast picked up the setting sun quite well.  Once things had got dark, it was well illuminated and hard to miss!

Got My Eye on You

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I have been in downtown Dallas a couple of times recently for work.  One of the places we have had dinner is across the road from a small park area that has a sculpture of a giant eyeball at one end.  It is a bit creepy to be honest.  I photographed it on my way to dinner when the sun was still going down.  When we came out, it was fully dark so I figured I would get another shot.

Akihabara at Night

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One of my meetings in Tokyo took place in the Akihabara district.  The company had a cafeteria on one of the higher floors of the building which served food and beer after work and they invited us up there.  Aside from having an enjoyable meal and fun company, we also got to enjoy the view of the city as the sun went down.  Tokyo is a city that is lit up at night and it looks beautiful.  I took along a camera because that’s what I do and grabbed a few shots of the view.  It would be good to have set up a time lapse as the sun went down.  If I ever get invited back, maybe I’ll try and get that done.

Fireworks in Kenmore

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Last year we were living in Kirkland when July 4th came around.  We checked out the fireworks in the town and I took the camera along.  Unfortunately, we picked a place to sit in the park that meant the fireworks were behind a tree so I didn’t get any pictures that I was happy with.  This year we have moved a little up the lake so we decided to try out the fireworks in Kenmore.

We turned up later in the evening and the park was busy with lots of families out enjoying the warm evening and waiting for the display.  We found a spot down near the water that seemed pretty convenient and set up.  I wasn’t too bothered about shots but will take them anyway since it is easy to do while enjoying the display.  We had some people in front of us that I thought might make good silhouettes in the shots too.

The display started at just after 10pm and lasted about twenty minutes.  They were launching from the pier in Log Boom Park so the fireworks were out over the lake.  The team had choreographed a great performance and everyone seemed to be pleased. These are a few of the shots I got while enjoying the show.

Night Arrival Over Seattle

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A trip away included a late arrival back into Seattle.  I hadn’t thought about which approach we might make to SeaTac so my seat selection was accidental, but I ended up on the side of the plane that was overlooking downtown Seattle as we made our final approach.  Having the M6 provided me with a bit more flexibility on shooting than would be the case with the phone and something far more maneuverable than if I was using one of the SLRs. It handled the low light levels surprisingly well.

I also think the smaller lens elements of the EF-M are better able to handle the distortion of windows.  The distorted bits could cover more of the field of view of course but you have more of a chance of getting between the worst bits.  With the big lenses, it is almost impossible to get a good clear patch for the whole lens when you zoom in to check the details.

Empire State Building

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A work trip required a quick dash across the country to New York.  I got into the city at the end of the day and checked in to my hotel for the evening.  It turned out that my room was at the top of the hotel and had a view straight across at the Empire State Building.  The weather wasn’t great but what are you going to do when you have an iconic building across the way?  Of course I took some pictures.  I even did a panorama.

When I got back from dinner, the building was lit up nicely.  The clouds had not dissipated but, at night, you don’t notice them unless they envelope the whole thing so I tested the low light capabilities of the camera.  It did just fine.  I headed out of town the following day.  It snowed in the morning but was bright and sunny by the time I was at the airport.  Too late to get a better shot sadly.

Night Waves

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After dinner one night in Yachats, I decided to go out and see what I could make of the waves crashing on the shore at night.  A number of lights were trained on the shoreline from the local properties so it wasn’t too dark out there.  Even so, it certainly wasn’t very light.  Time to test the low light capabilities of the cameras.  The fact I was going to get slow shutter speeds didn’t bother me particularly as I was interested to see the effects that I could get showing the motion of the waves.

Light levels were indeed better than I had anticipated and I was able to get a lot of shots that came out okay.  There was a good element of luck involved too.  Waves are horribly unpredictable.  If you see something good, you can almost guarantee it won’t do it again and, even if it does, it will be ages before the next set of waves comes in and, even then, the big wave will break differently.  Also, some of the shapes they make turn out to look good in the shot and others are just indistinct messes.  Nothing to do but hang around for a long time and try and lot of different shots and see which ones work.  This randomness is a little frustrating as you feel you should be able to do something to improve but, in this case, it is a case of being there.

Mossie Night Run

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Night photo shoots are becoming more popular these days.  The Flying Heritage Combat Armor Museum (FHCAM) held one with the de Havilland Mosquito.  The evening started out with the plane on the ramp when people were free to wander around the aircraft.  I was shooting a lot of long exposures using the tripod which does a good job of removing the people provided they keep moving.  However, a few people were hanging around for long periods so they show up in the shots.  Others were using the flashes on their cameras or flashlights to look at stuff which made things blow out.

Once we were all cleared from the ramp, one of the FHCAM crew came out to talk about the aircraft.  He was the one that would carry out the engine runs and he ran through the test procedures that would be followed for the engines.  People had the chance to ask questions and get a good understanding of the plane and how it is operated.

Then came the fun.  The engines were fired up in sequence.  Then they were run through the test program.  The blue flame from the exhaust stacks could be clearly seen in the very dark conditions.  When the mag checks were carried out, the flames were even more conspicuous.  I moved around a bit to get some different positions.  I was quite surprised to see how blurred some of the shots were.  The aircraft clearly moves a lot despite being chocked and so some of the shots were totally unusable.  This was a lesson learned.  In future I would focus on shortening the exposure times a lot to minimize this issue which I hadn’t anticipated.

I also shot a bunch of video while the runs were underway.  The edited video is below.  It was a fun evening and thanks to FHCAM for holding it.  It would be fun to do on another type.  It might be nice to have a touch more light on the ramp but the dark conditions did have some advantages.  I discovered a bit about shooting in that environment which should hopefully help on future night shoots.