Thursday, February 1, 2007

My little city lights


My little city lights, originally uploaded by juliecinci.

Being a Los Angeles native, I love to see city lights at night, particularly from high places. My favorite airport entry in the world is LAX at night. Moving to Cincinnati made me crazy the first year. So few hills, no way to get up high and see out. The kids and Jon joke with me because I have this one spot on our way home that has a little rise where you can see lights and I have commented on it *every single time* for seven years. It's at a traffic light so I can never get out of the car to take a picture.

This scene is taken from one of the other hills I love that gives a glimpse of night lights in Union Center (West Chester, where IKEA will eventually be). Tonight I took Jacob to the high school for fall registration and this is the view on the way to Lakota West HS. He helped me shoot this one on our way home. You can see the Marriot hotel on the right (which was there when we had the Trapdoor retreat at my house) and the Rave movie theater on the left (which is new as of two years ago).

I love the little light on the bottom right of the photo that sends out its rays in spokes as if on a wheel.

6 comments:

Colleen said...

So talk to me about taking night pictures. When I tried that in Seattle last week it was a bust. I used the "night" scene setting and the lights were a total blur. What did you guys do?

Ampersand said...

Ahh, city lights, even in your little hamlet. Nice, even looks wintery.

LauraLiz said...

I like the warmer, more detailed views of the homes with the less personal lights of the city in the background.

I've got to read up on night photography. My camera has a couple of settings, depending on what you are after, but I haven't had time to play with it. And I need my glasses to see the settings. Sigh.

Unknown said...

Colleen and Laura, the key to this photo was setting the camera down on a box (we used one of those green electric boxes that looks like a flat fire hydrant) and opening the exposure to a full second. I tried several different settings and had a variety of night sky colors as a result. One of them was red and orange but I didn't like it. Then there were a couple that were grey and there were two that were pinker (like this one).

Jacob had one with the lights that moved a bit and it created a pretty effect. But I wanted to remember the city as it looked to me.

Julie

NoVA Dad said...

This is great -- I've always loved city lights at night, no matter what the city. There's something magical about them, no matter where they are. Nice shot!

- Matt

Katrina said...

Very pretty. I like the purple/pink in the sky.

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