Storefronts at night

chandi

Hello all.

Relatively new to dgrin, and my first post in this 'Field & Street' section. Taken up photography recently having acquired an R1, and am experimenting with the camera, with photoshop, with HDRs, with night-time photography.... and so on, and here's a couple of results from last night in Sunnyvale downtown.


A belly dancing costumes store display at night: (HDR)



And here's a Musical instruments store display at night:



All negative feedback is greatly appreciated :thumb Thanks.

Bob Bell

Flash is a difficult thing to do with highly reflective subjects. In the first shot get rid of the flash reflection on the left. A tripod long exposure and more saturation and contrast could make this a very nice image. Without the flash you don't have the shadows of the decorations.

The second image. All of the whites are too hot. The colors of the body and the subjects behind bars are pretty cool. A big diffuser or stop down the flash a bit would make this better. I think there is a lot of potential for a strong image here.

chandi

Bob Bell wrote:

Flash is a difficult thing to do with highly reflective subjects. In the first shot get rid of the flash reflection on the left. A tripod long exposure and more saturation and contrast could make this a very nice image. Without the flash you don't have the shadows of the decorations.

The second image. All of the whites are too hot. The colors of the body and the subjects behind bars are pretty cool. A big diffuser or stop down the flash a bit would make this better. I think there is a lot of potential for a strong image here.

Thanks for the feedback Bob. Actually, I shot both of them on tripod without the flash. In the first case, there was a street light nearby whose reflection and shadows I couldn't get rid of. As for the second pic, there was a strong focus/showcase light on top of the guitars that I didn't know how to handle - either the fringes of the pic became too dark or the center of the pic was washed out depending on how I exposed. I'll try to do a HDR on that one too to see if it'll help. Do you think this individual shot (not a HDR) of the first pic is better?