The Empty Page

The Empty Page

It's been a long time since I last visited Changi Village and took a stroll along the Changi Boardwalk. I just did last night and rediscovered some little changes. NParks has had removed the rooftop covers of the resting sheds along the boardwalk, right outside the seafood restaurant by the beach.

I believe NParks wanted to prohibit members of public not to camp or stay there for a prolong time period. Most of the folks are there for their fishing hobby. If it rains they have to find their ways for covers.

I walked all the way to the end of the boardwalk for this pair of empty seats. I didn't make any night photos in the past so I thought I want to do it now. With that said, the above photo is the result of stacking 2 photos - one exposed for the foreground seats and the other for the cloudy night sky.

I exposed the first photo for 120 seconds at ISO 200 just enough to open up the shadow details and retaining highlight details. Next, I exposed for the night sky for another 120 seconds with higher ISO of 400.

Here's a little snippet - A 9-stops Variable ND filter was fit on my Tokina 11-16mm lens, stop down to 5 stops hence I was able to get good exposures.

The main reason why I made all my night photos in RAW just so I have even more controls during post-production. To make the stacked result more pleasing, I used Auto WB for the foreground seats for warmer color and Incandescent WB for the night sky, just to get that bluesy cool color. Based on art drawing/painting theories or color theories, place subjects with warmer color against cooler color background would make them more outstanding and POP!

No light painting needed. Take a closer look and study the shadows, you would know where the light sources came from i.e. one on camera left and one behind camera right. After much retouching on the wooden floor (some wet surface and minor stains) just to digitally clean up and make it more presentation. All except the large portion of stains on the far left. I kept it untouched just to keep things back to a natural state and not to over-do. In the end, I am very satisfied with the final result.