Downtown Lights at Early Dawn

I have not been roaming with the camera during this hot spell, but I did get out very early one morning before the heat wave arrived in its fullness. I took the camera to our main street when it was beginning to dawn. Lights are usually still on at this pre-sunrise stage, but the shooting is a little easier than when it is pitch black. Mind you, I could have left it still a little later to get a little bit more ambient light.

The town keeps some Christmas-style lights up all year, and these are primarily what I wanted to shoot, especially if I could include some lit storefronts in the photo.

In this early light, exposures will be long, so one needs to use a tripod. I took one hand-held photo anyway, just to get a sense of the scene. But I forgot that I often have a 2 second delay on the shutter, and I wobbled the camera all over the place, which resulted in funky twirls of light.

But then, for fun in edit, I superimposed that photo on another, steady one of the same scene.

A wider photo with the same store, Amethyst, in the centre.

 

Then, I took some vertical photos ↓↓ using the tree, which is on the right, in the above ↑↑  photo.

The next photo is the same composition as above, but in the 6-second exposure, a car went by leaving a light trail, so I cropped the photo differently, eliminating the darkened 3rd storey windows. Yes spellchecker, I do want an e in storey.

I moved down the street and photographed the post office, in which the highlight is probably the flowerbed.

All in all, it was a bit of a challenging shoot, so it took me almost a week before I was satisfied enough with the photos to post them. I am often disappointed when I initially see the photos on-screen. For one thing, they are in RAW (ie only partially developed) format, so they require some processing. After that, they may require a little more processing to season to taste until I am somewhat happier with them.