Not Quite Night series #90

Good evening nightographers! I hope everyone is safe and sound at home, reading my blog at this point in time. Tonight I'm putting up the latest night street photograph for the Not Quite Night series. 

It's been a long agonizing nine months since the last NQN photo was posted on the first day of the year 2020. I can't wait to show you my new NQN work. So let's jump right into.

Some of you, I mean the local Singaporeans, might know where this place is located from the top photo (taken with my iPhone 6 Plus on Pano Mode). Yes, it's at Neil Road. The white building with the huge colorful wall mural in the background is one of the famous New York burger chain outlets, Shake Shack. Below are two reference shots I made upon reaching the location.

Two weeks ago, I was there and made a few shots on various focal lengths, but I wasn't satisfied with the results especially on the composition. Here are the three shots out of seventeen I made in the nautical twilight.

These shots were made with my Nikon D300 on L-bracket, mounted on a tripod. I felt I didn't get it right just as I have had pre-visualized. I could go much lower and shifted more to the left side. So I decided to go back there a week later in early dawn before the first light kicks in. And I brought along a useful tool - Manfrotto 143 Magic Arm.

With this Magic Arm mounted onto the left-hand side railing, I could get the right lowest spot and composition I wanted. However, it wasn't an easy task. I had a hard time looking through the viewfinder to compose the shot and I kept adjusting and bending my body and head, even I fitted on an angle finder. My left hand was pushing away the green foliage while my right hand was holding the mounted camera for composition and bubble level. Eventually, I pulled down the locking lever on the magic arm to secure the setting and went ahead to make a test shot. Here's the result.

Yeah, I was pretty happy with this setting and composition. My composition was based on the guidelines shown below. P1 denotes the mid-range where the road sign is, and P2 on the foreground staircase. However, there's this distracting rooftop element on the top right section of the frame (circled in red, shown above). I thought I can remove it in Photoshop during the post-production, but I decided not to and did a minor adjustment.

So finally I was all set and ready for that magical moment. The first light came in at around 0635 hours. As the morning sky got brighter, I released the shutter and bracketed a few frames with slightly different shutter speeds. Since I made all photos in RAW format, I have more control over getting the best result I wanted.

I hereby present you NQN #90 – Lost Evening, Found Morning