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It’s my last night in Austin for a while so I decided to go take some photos of, well, AUSTIN! I tried to get some of those night cityscape photos we are so use to seeing. In order to accomplish this I needed to find a place that was interesting that I could see the city. I used my wide angle lens 10-22mm for the shoot and all the shots here were 8 to 30 second exposures. I also waited until just after sunset to get started to try and find that sweetspot right before the sky gets really dark.

This was the first exposure that I took. It was an 8 second exposure but there was still a little too much light in the sky and I still wasn’t able to really get the lights to reflect off the water.

Still an 8 second exposure but 10 minutes later.

5 minutes later. Still an 8 second exposure. Was happy with the sky but the light reflections off the river were a little week for me I wanted more. I decided to increase the shutter time to a magical 20 seconds in order to allow more light to be gathered off the river. This lightened up the scene a little but the available light was diminishing quickly so what did I have to lose!

ROCKEN! I got what I was going for! Now to pop off as many as I can before the sun goes away for the day.

Now that I was happy with those photos I decided to take one of the power station just to the left (the direction of the setting sun, hence the photo is lighter).

I finished up the night at my favorite location in all of Austin. The cliff overlooking the 360 bridge. This location has gotten quick popular as there was quite a few people up there. I used to be able to go whenever and be the only one there. I wish I had another day here to do these like the ones above (with a little ambient but that will have to wait for another day). I hope you enjoy!

Tips for night photograph:

• Take a flashlight: makes it easier to find you gear put it together and set your settings.
• Shoot at a low ISO: lower the ISO the lower the noise in your photo.
• Don’t shoot wide open if you don’t have to: Most lenses aren’t their sharpest wide open and it is hard enough to focus in low light. Do yourself a favor and shoot with a smaller aperture. If you are having problems finding something to focus on (lights sometimes work well) then try setting your focus to infinite and backing off that just a bit.