September 13, 2009 - Twilight overcast sky

1/15

f5.6

ISO 400

18mm

JPEG

I had been inspired recently by Bill Warren's outstanding photo collection of the world's largest tourist trap (called South of the Border on I-95 in South Carolina), so when I saw a chance to get a similar photo, I jumped at it.

I took this on an overcast day right as the sun was setting. It was bright enough to see, but dark enough that many businesses had their colorful lights and signs on. There was a balance to how bright the sky was compared to the business lights.

After I loaded the photo into Photoshop Elements, I lowered the exposure, increased the contrast, and pumped up the saturation a little. Even though I accidentally shot this as a JPEG (I had left it in JPEG mode after the tennis match the day before), I still used Adobe Camera Raw to edit the photo. How did I do that? I just selected 'Open As...' from the menu in the Editor, found my JPEG image, and chose to open it as a Camera RAW image in the dropdown menu at the bottom of the 'Open File' window.

The hardest thing for me was getting the photo to appear straight. I hadn't brought a tripod along, so I had to hand-hold the camera as I was shooting. The light was fading fast, so while the pictures I had started taking a few minutes before at ISO 400, I should have adjusted to ISO 800 for this one.

To make things harder, I was standing on the tall cement base of one of the light poles around the station so my angle of view would be a little higher and I wouldn't be aiming the camera up so much. I had to hold onto the pole with one hand while shooting with the other. It's amazing that a photo came out clear at all. I guess that really speaks to the technology put into these image-stabilized lenses that Canon is producing now.

I wish I had waited around a few more minutes and gotten another set of photos when it was almost dark.

I also want to go back and see what I can do to dial down the blue in the sky. I think if it was more grey, then with a little selective burning and dodging (lightening and darkening) I could make this look like a real stormy sky.