March 25, 2004: Times Square 1
I always feel like a tourist when I pass through Times Square- and like most of the tourists who visit, I've yet to take a good picture there. On short exposures, the intensity of the light from the signs tends to flood out the other scenery, and on long exposures, the signs are rendered at featureless white voids. That can be cool, in a sort of Sugimoto movie theater kind of way, but can also look pretty bad. One solution would be taking multiple pictures- one for the signs, one for the scenery, and the editing them together in Photoshop- but that would take a half hour for each picture. Any other other ideas? [Unrelated: if any of you are feeling generous, or just want to drool over some nice equipment, I've put my B&H Photography wishlist online.]
Comments
jake, i think that top picture is fantastic. the one way sign at the top, with the crosswalk striping at the bottom? the curved signage on the left opposite the boxiness on the right? it all adds up to great composition in my book.
That's quite a list of equipment you're looking for.
love love love the Howard Johnson's shot. When I left NYC I had my going away party there. Fried clams and box cars. Bliss.
Hasselbald makes a Rangefinder? And it does panorama and standard! Wow I didn't know about that! That's totally going on my B&H wishlist! Learn something new from the Bluejake with every post. Thanks man!
Someone please invite me to Big Apple...
Arghhh! Oh, man, I love those night shots. Give us some more, please
Great stuff. These photos gave me the feeling of being there - especially the Morgan Stanley and Howard Johnson's pics.
If you shot the view with the coke sign with a TSE lens shifted upwards the falloff at the top of the image might darken it a bit and pull back a bit of detail. It's a similar effect to a split neutral density filter.
I'd love to see these with the tilt/shift.
What's the shipping address for your 1Ds?
I love the one with the nypd cruiser and the sailor on the left. The trick with exposures is balancing the light. the light is just starting to hang on in the evening, into that sweet spot around may-june when it gets dark very slowly. that twilight is what will expose the surrounding and then you can adjust your exposure for the neon signs. The moving signs, forget it. but everything else you can get and not overexpose and still have detail everywhere else. also, digital is not so good for this except that you could do what you say, make two exposures. blending two is not that hard really, you need to use the painting tools not the selection tools.
color neg film is more forgiving of these kinds of things. its response to light is not linear. so the highlights build more slowly and then only get so dense. in digital if it is over 255 its gone forever. digital also has more of a linear response to light so it is difficult to compress the scene which is what film can do. black and white is the ultimate, you can process the film such that the highlights build very slowly while the shadows come up more. this is a zone system thing.
try shooting with the camera raw settings and then play with photoshops (7) highlight/shadow control, its a sophisticated kind of contrast masking that can give you what you are looking for. hth
great pictures and site. i found it through infrangible.
RW
I enjoy your pics - great photography! I recently started my blog (mostly pics) and your NYC pics here really inspire me to learn more about photography. Keep it up - this is great stuff!
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