Shot Notes
Bryant Park is a fairly small park in central Manhattan, right next to the New York Public Library and a street away from Times Square. This was taken on our first full day out in NYC, having gotten in the night before at about 9pm and, as you can see, the weather was absolutely fantastic.
Most of that day was spent looking at the big tourist attractions and this place provided a much needed rest after a hard day’s walking (at least, by my standards!) If you look to the left of the picture, you’ll see the Empire State Building.
This photo in particular stood out for me. I like the unusual perspective that the 10-22 brings out, and the way the trees creep in from the edge as if growing directly towards the sunlight.
Any regular readers should expect a lot more of these NYC photos for the time being, as I have a couple good ones to show off!
How exactly does one go about shooting directly into the sun without having a black picture? I’d imagine manual exposure, but then you’d have a giant overexposed spot.
This was a bit of a cheat on my part in post-processing. Unless you have a camera with a very large dynamic range, there’s no way to get both very dark and very bright exposed correctly in one exposure. You have two options:
I chose option 2 in this case because the foreground was very bright indeed due to the sun. But it’s not always viable and adds noise to the bits you choose to overexpose.
hello XYLOID
that is a tremendous photo
you’re right, it is as if the buildings and trees are leaning towards the center,
it creates a HOLLOW-in-the-WOODS effect, an intimate feeling that is not typically Manhattan (where things tend to be vertical and ascending)
what is a 10-22 ? how does it create this effect ?
MARK told me about your photo site (I had written him an email about funny little BILLEH)
I live in Manhattan, I used to study at City University of NY, which is right at Bryant Park –
but the park was very different in those days (unpopulated, no corporate sponsors, even a little dangerous at night)
I will now go look at some more of your photos
Hi Ira,
The 10-22 is one of my assortment of lenses. The lens itself is a Canon 10-22mm. Essentially, the field of view is so wide at 10mm that you get a kind of distortion effect at the sides which elongates everything.
Thanks very much for the compliments