Brice Digital Photography

Paris at night

Paris at night is an awesome sight to behold. Night photos of Paris are rarely dull, except the typical ones you see of the Eiffel Tower. This “headlights in the city of lights” night shot was taken on a bridge overlooking the River Seine and the 14th Century Conciergerie – the oldest prison in France.  With the camera set in manual mode I used a long exposure time of 30 seconds to achieve the streak effect on the headlights.  I clearly had to use a tripod for this and also a remote shutter control to guarantee any sharpness. I played around with small aperture settings to maximise the depth of field and ensure all the background detail was in focus, and finally ended up with the smallest aperture of f22.  For a scene with such a high level of contrast it was very difficult to maintain balance i.e. achieve a decent exposure of the river and buildings while avoiding over-exposure of the car headlights. I took several exposure readings with varying levels of traffic then used the exposure lock facility on the camera. After many attempts I ended up with this result. The beauty of digital photography is that you can try many things and avoid being disappointed with a great opportunity. Later I learned that I could have taken two shots using two exposure settings – one using a suitable exposure for the river and the other for the headlights, then merge them together on Photoshop, had I known how to do it.  This technique is explained in an excellent article on exposure lock at:
http://www.all-things-photography.com/exposure-lock.html


For more night photos of Paris, please visit my Paris By Night gallery at http://www.pbase.com/brice/paris_by_night