Vancouver's West End, By Night

When I was down at Vanier Park on Sunday I ended up staying somewhat longer than I'd first intended then let it drag on a little longer and longer...

Then the cold got to me - very nippy down by the water - and I packed it in for the day, specially as I hadn't really dressed for it and 4 hours out in the damp chill was enough. But I did stay long enough for night to fully develop, and got this shot (114 seconds, f/16, ISO 50, EF 17-40@18mm) from almost the same vantage point as this shot posted a little over a year ago. I don't normally mention the technical specs as I usually can't be bothered to add them in manually, and blogger doesn't do it automatically - in fact it appears to strip the exif info from pictures at upload. Anyway, I thought I'd include them with this shot, just in case anyone was wondering what settings I'd used.

I remember when I posted that other shot that it got very favorable comments, but to me at least, it pales when compared to this (I've just done a side-by-side of them). Better gear, a lot more knowledge, and more processing skill (though to be honest, this one required very little compared to the earlier shot) are all starting to come together.

As a special treat, the larger version you get when you click on a picture is the full 1600 pixels wide that Blogger allows.

As always, I invite comments. Not just from Raechel and Alison (my faithful comment contributors!), everyone is welcome to leave a comment, good or bad, as long as it's about the picture.

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Dingy and Dock

Thought I'd try to get some last-light-of-the-day pictures down at Vanier Park this evening. Unfortunately, due to traffic and failing to allow for the correct time of sunset, I didn't get there on time. It was also partly due to the low cloud over Georgia Straight which blocked out the best of the last part of the sun.
As I had nothing better planned for the evening I hung around and practiced my night-shooting. It was the first time I'd done any (reasonably) long exposures, something I'd been meaning to try out for a while. This one was 109 seconds, and while the sky is a little brighter than I'd prefer, I'm fairly happy with it for a number of reasons:
• It captures the light on the dock and small boats in the foreground very nicely,
• Almost everything is in focus and clear. The main exception is the large boat (the Sea Lion), which moved somewhat over the almost two minutes,
• I like the balance of the composition with the dock and boats in the foreground and the West End in the background.

Oh, and Corwin, if you look really closely at the stern of the dingy, you can just make out a blurry "something" standing on the transom. It's yet another Heron... And no, I'm not going to buy those double-headed sharpies so that you can draw this one :)

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