Last night I headed into Auckland with a fellow South Auckland photography enthusiast. The idea was to take some night time shots and then head over to Grand Central in Ponsonby to see the Alan Brown Project. Sadly I got the days muddled … Alan Brown isn’t performing until next week … typical!!
The first stop was just over the harbour bridge. I usually take the Stafford Road exit and work my way back to get close to the water to get a shot looking back towards the city. It’s quiet here and so we had a chance to experiment with different camera settings to see the changes to the image as ISO, shutter speed or aperture are changed. The thing that made the biggest impression on me was the effect the tripod had on the image as the exposure time was increased. My friend had a slightly shorter tripod than me and had extended the centre column to get more height. Multi-second images taken with the centre column extend were blurry compared to those with the centre column fully lowered. I was really quite surprised by the level of camera movement as it was quite a still night.
Before heading into the city we tried a few more shots in an attempt to get car head and tail light trails. The long exposures help smooth out the water as well as give a pleasing effect with the lights from the cars on the motorway. The aperture in this shot was quite small and has given the street lights a pleasing star burst effect. I can recall many years ago I bought a special starburst filter for my old Pentax. I don’t recall using it much … and I can’t even find it now!
After shooting the passing cars we tried the Grand Central only to discover we had the wrong day for Alan Brown. Thankfully Hopetoun Road is close by, so a few more shots looking towards Skytower before heading home. Quite a pleasant evening and something we should try again … perhaps when the Alan Brown Project is performing!
I’ve uploaded each of these images to my Auckland City Gallery. Please take a look. There may be other images there that you’ll find interesting or even some you may like to purchase 😉
