If this is what you were seeing on New Year’s Eve, then maybe you had too much celebration for the end of 2011. Were you glad to see the start of a new year?
And no, this was not done in post-production. This is how the photograph came out of the camera. The exposure was 1/25th of a second. That’s the time it took to create this photograph. How long would it take to recreate this same effect with photo editing software?
A View from The Stratosphere | ©2011 David Allio
Not every scene lends itself to this type of exposure technique. Highlights and shadows and a central focal point are critical to success.
A zoom lens is required to reproduce this effect during the exposure. In this case, an AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm 1:2.8G ED lens was attached to a Nikon D3 body.
Stability is key during the exposure. A monopod or tripod is very helpful, but the physical movements required during the exposure can cause unwanted shakes in the zoom line.
For this photograph, a Las Vegas hotel and casino was selected to be the focal point of the exposure. Without a reasonably strong focal point, the eyes are drawn to nothing in particular and the creative effect is wasted.
The trick is to do a smooth and consistent changing of the focal length during the exposure and keep the focal point in the absolute middle of the frame. For this exposure, the lens was set at 24mm and zoomed to about 50mm. The aperture was f/4.5 with film speed of 3200 ISO.
In post production, the image was cropped. The focal point was moved from the center of the frame to a more interesting position toward the bottom right of the frame.
Add this to your lists of New Year’s resolutions: “Do it right, right now!”
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