Atlanta, GA

I traveled to Alabama this week to visit a couple of our print sites.  To save some cash, I flew into Atlanta and then drove the rest of the way.  When checking flights I discovered that I could save $170 if I waited and flew back on Saturday.  Bummer, that meant having to spend a night in Atlanta...a city in which I have never had the opportunity to capture a night cityscape.  So I decided to take one for the team and save the company some money by sticking it out in Atlanta last night.

The bad news is that I forgot a very key item - gloves!  And it was below freezing with a wicked wind chill.  The good news is that the lack of gloves didn't keep me from being able to take pictures - it just meant that I couldn't feel my hands by the time I was done.  Literally.  I couldn't feel my hands.  As hard as I tried, I couldn't collapse my tripod when I was finished.  I had walked two blocks before I finally was able to get my fingers to do what they needed to do.  It was crazy!  Yes, my Canadian friends, I am aware that those of us much closer to the equator are wimps - but it was still very cold!

I decided to take my cityscapes in the location where everyone takes Atlanta cityscapes.  Atlanta really only has one location where you can do a cityscape on water and you miss out on many of the cool buildings so I decided to save that location for when I come back in May.  The spot I chose is cool because you look down on a fairly busy section of roadways that go off in multiple directions.  So a nice long exposure gets those cool light trails. 

What I didn't take into account is that you are shooting from the top of a bridge.  While that doesn't matter when taking a cool cityscape for your personal collection, that doesn't work for stock photography unless you want to downsize your picture a TON.  You see, the bridge shakes every time a car goes over it.  With a nice long 30 second exposure, that means your picture doesn't come out crisp which is a sure-fire rejection.  So I couldn't capture the shot from the middle of the bridge where everyone else does which meant needing to take the picture from one side of the bridge or the other.  The other challenge was that there were not a lot of cars going into the city on a Friday night so there wasn't an even traffic flow.  So I chose the side with the most traffic. 

My normal night cityscape process involves taking shots every thirty second so I can go through and find the one that was taken at the perfect time when the sky was the deepest blue.  But the roadway I was capturing ran into a stoplight 100 yards behind me.  So I had to wait around 3 minutes between shots to get the traffic moving again so I would get the light trails.  Instead of my normal 50 or so shots to choose from, I had 6.  And there was a more important factor than the deep sky.  I had to figure out which had the best light trails - mainly which had the most traffic going into the city.  The final challenge was some dark clouds that didn't quite position themselves in an ideal spot. 

When all was said and done, I didn't quite get what I was looking for and I definitely decided I prefer water but I still got a shot I am happy with and that should be usable for stock.  Here's my first draft (still in Atlanta - will work on this more when I have my monitor in front of me):

P.S.  Less than 3 days until Independence kicks in!