Street Photography Matt Hill Street Photography Matt Hill

Night for Day in Times Square

There is something gorgeous about shooting at f/2.8 for two minutes during the daytime.

And since my Petzval hasn't gotten a lot of love lately, I played around a bit with the waterhouse aperture plate with a star. Fun bokeh in a place as shiny as Times Square.

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Night Photography Matt Hill Night Photography Matt Hill

69th St Transfer Bridge Revisited

​floating debris makes for a great time dilation subject

​Five years ago, Gabe and I had our first night out shooting NPy together at this location.

Two nights ago, I had the pleasure of revisiting this place with Erik Ward and Dan O'Neil, two guys who also met around five years ago and have been doing Urbex together ever since. Cool guys, very fun with which to shoot.

I must admit, one of my favorite NPy photographs I have ever shot was at this location and I was loathe to encroach on my personal enjoyment on its happy memory. But I approached it with an open mind to experiment ​and apply all that I have learned in the last five years. Great decision :)

Here is the image I hold dear from back then:​

​May, 2008
​Mamiya 7, 43mm, f/16 @ 12 min
​Ilford XP2 Super, 120

I remember Gabe shooting for much shorter times and wondering why I was exposing so long. I am not sure I knew what I was doing, but instinct told me to expose for 12 minutes.​ In hindsight, I knew I wanted the transfer bridge to stand out and since it was at least 3 stops darker than the correct exposure for the rest of the City, I let it burn...

This lesson has stuck with me over the years. Upon returning, I wanted to test the theory again and shot two different exposures just to see what happened:

​March, 2013
​D700, 14mm, f/13 @ 2 minutes

​

​​March, 2013
​D700, 14mm, f/8 @ 2 minutes

I think they are both successful for different reasons. The former has the qualities of all the light sources and shadows. The latter is more of an artistic statement about the relationship between the foreground and the background. ​

Moving on... here are some more shots & experiments from the evening:​

 
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