Remember to visit http://www.pwassignments.com after you complete the assignment and
share your favorite photo! It’s a community of enthusiastic photographers and a great
place to view what other readers have created. You can also post comments and read
encouraging suggestions and feedback.Assignment
Capture a cityscape at night
This assignment for this chapter is to capture a cityscape at night and then post your favorite
image to the website.
Where you shoot from is important when planning a cityscape photo. To get this photo, I set up
on Coronado Island before the sun set, and with plenty of daylight left, I set up my tripod in an
area that would not interfere with any pedestrians and wouldn’t be blocked by the ferry when it
pulled into port. As the sun set, I started to take a series of photos, adjusting the exposure each
time; I needed to use longer and longer shutter speeds to get a proper exposure. As I moved into
the very long exposures, I noticed that the images were losing their sharpness, so I increased the
ISO so that I could use faster shutter speeds and hopefully keep the image sharp. This is my
favorite of the series I took. It was taken at 2 seconds, f/10, and ISO 1600.
To keep the image as sharp as possible, and to allow me to keep an eye on my surroundings, I
used a cable release to trigger the shutter on the camera. This way, I didn’t have to touch the
camera and move it in any way. I used a long lens to get in close and then cropped the image
even more in postproduction. The only real change to the image that was done on the computer
was to adjust the white balance of the image to get the colors closer to how I wanted them.