In March 2010 I was in Frankfurt again. Again, I was there for a training and again I brought my tripod and my camera for taking some night shots in the city. But, this time I went along the river instead of heading between the skyscrapers.
I’m presenting the images here although they are not so good to visualize certain mistakes I did at that time.
The time of the day was right and the horizon is balanced. But, the verticals near the sides are not vertical. They are leaning to the center of the image. That’s because of the wide-angle lens. The images are taken with a camera having an APS-C sensor and an 18-105 mm zoom lens at 18mm. Because of the height of the buildings I had to tilt the lens upwards on the tripod which results in this ugly appearance. At that time I didn’t have the tools and the knowledge to correct it in post-processing.
The next problem here is the nearly burnt-out highlights. As I wrote in my last post on night-photography in Frankfurt, I should have made more than one image of each setting with slightly different aperture times while leaving all other settings untouched. My camera at that time already had the ability to use bracketing for such images, but I wasn’t aware of it. Thanks for using raw instead of JPG, I was at least able to recover a little bit, but for the price of some noise (especially in the last one, which is also taken too late).
So, when looking from today at these images, I have to say, I should return to Frankfurt and redo the job! In this post you can see (no, it’s not Frankfurt but some other night shots) how these images should look like when having done the job properly. I also explain the necessary technic in more detail over there.
Did you ever have such a review on old images of yours? Not only looking at them but reviewing and analyzing them with your current knowledge. It can help you a lot to make some progress. Do so with some distance. Keep out any memories (sweet or bad) and all emotions. Look at the lights, the darks, the horizon, and the overall composition. Be critical and name all the things you either made good or bad. Compare your images with similar images you can find online i.e. at Flickr. Ask yourself, could I do better in comparison with the other images? What could I do better? What are the reasons for the differences?
In case, you want to have an independent review, you can book me for an hour or so and we can discuss your images during an online session.
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I often try to do it and you become more and more critical about yourself.
that’s good. When recognizing your own mistakes, you’re able to learn from them and even already learned to see them 👍
I’ve learned so much over the years, seeing my early posts, I’m like why did I post that and think its any good 🙂 Live and Learn!
yes, Ritva, Live and Learn – lifelong learning 🙂