With some of you emailing me, wanting to know when I was going to publish these photos from last night, I knew I couldn’t procrastinate much longer especially with a contest at stake.  I took about 150 photos last evening and had the special privilege to meet up with an acquaintance of mine that was able to get us special access to a certain rooftop for some amazing views that I will never forget.  Aaron, thanks again!  I also want to thank the security guard that escorted us, he went above and beyond.  What can I say, I love this city!  After photographing hundreds of cities around the world, very few cities give me as much pleasure and gratification as Cincinnati.  There are so many options and when an event like this happens, it becomes a strategy on which ones we are going to tackle during the evening.  Some are a little risky and include trespassing but luckily if any of that happened last night (pleading the 5th), we didn’t encounter any problems.  It is a yearly event that gets very little coverage in the media and it is always a last minute announcement that you have to adjust your personal schedule for, unfortunately last year I was out of town for it.  Luckily for me, it happened right in between two of my business trips this year.

 

Since I can submit four photos, please tell me your four favorites. I numbered them to make it easier to reply.

 

Alas, here are the photos:

 

1.

 

2.

 

3.

 

4.

 

5.

 

6.

 

7.

 

8.

 

9.

 

10.

 

11.

 

12.

 

13.

 

14.

 

15.

 

16.

 

17.

 

18.

 

19.

 

20.

 

21.

 

22.

 

23.

 

24.

 

25.

 

26.

 

27.

 

28.

 

29.

 

30.

 

31.

 

32.

I think 22 is my favorite but it's really hard to say. The ones of Paul Brown are incredible.

I'm going with 1, 5, 9, 10

 

Awesome . . . All around really!

16, 21, 23, and 29.  These are all great! 

5 and 29 really stood out to me. Great photos

Amazing...I like the ones of PBS as well as the last one of the Ascent.  Great (original) views!

Just spectacular!!

2's my favorite.  Bellevue shots were kinda crooked (Corky ;)) but RiverCenter shots were the best.

They're all great! Couple post cards in there as well.

 

*EDIT*

 

1, 2, 6 is a fantastic shot of PBS.

Those are really amazing.  It is difficult to pick, but I guess 2, 18, 23, and 27 are my favorites.

Simply amazing!

Those stadium shots were simply magnifique!

22

Thanks for the kind words.  Keep the replies coming with your favorite four.

I'll go with 23 for the fourth pick.

you should have made this a poll.  (hint..hint) lol  :wink:

4, 6, 8, 11, 16, 18, 26, 29, 32 are great

 

fave four: in order

4, 29, 32 & 8

 

If you could have gotte 8/18 from above the parking lots - that would have been amazing.

 

i really like 25 with the church in the background :)

2,3,8 are my favorites.

2 15 16 29

Rockin'! I like 16, 23, 27 and 29 the most.

If only the team that calls that stadium home looked half of good as your pics! Absolutely beautiful, if I had to only choose four I'd go with 9, 16, 23, 29..

Do you have a wide-angle vertical from this spot?

 

 

Also, these photos with the stadium lights are great illustrations of a situation which exceeds the roughly 7 EV exposure range of digital cameras...this situation looks like either 9 or 10 EV's.  This situation requires a tripod, two exposures roughly 3-4 EV's apart, and a minute or two on photoshop.  And I'd guess that the new stadiums have lights that are a big brighter than Riverfront's were.  The black & white zone system can overcome this exposure range but it's really tricky and requires a hand-mixed developer that prevents highlights from blowing out. 

 

Jake I did have a hard time trying not to overexpose the stadiums while still properly exposing the city.  I am willing to hear suggestions for shooting stadiums with bright lights coupled with skyscrapers with moderate lighting.

18 is my favorite. Exposures are all in a manageable range, and color and sharpness are good. I like 2 and 8 too (just about the same scene) but 18 has a definite edge.

This one of PBS is just sick ... it reminds me of a modern-day Roman coliseum where you go to watch 2 people fight until one ends up killed ... just awesome.

 

2, 6, 8, 16 and 18.  But they're all very nice.

 

Sorry...I couldn't narrow it down to four!

What blank area? :wink:

They really ought to do something with that blank area between the two stadiums on the riverfront. It's an eye-sore. ;)

 

I think the general public is caring too much about how fast it's developed. The best thing we can do promote positive thoughts and ideas about downtown and spend our money there. Expecting it to get done asap is only going to set people up for disappointment and breed more negativity, imo.

>I am willing to hear suggestions for shooting stadiums with bright lights coupled with skyscrapers with moderate lighting.

 

Use the spot or center-weighted metering mode on the camera, not matrix metering.  It will overexpose in situations like this.  Or you can just shoot on manual and keep taking shots at various settings until the levels on the histogram start hitting the right side of the graph, at which point the highlights start blowing out.  You can probably blow them out by about a half stop and it'll look okay but if you're shooting with RAW files you can just take one shot and then mess with the exposure slider and combine two different versions with layers on photoshop.  You can even mess with color temp when you're blending the two layers if you want.  The shots where the suspension bridge is in front make it virtually impossible to do what I just described...you'd be fiddling for hours on photoshop.  But on straight-ahead shots, it's doable. 

Valid point, since I rarely do portrait shots, I didn't think to set the camera to spot metering.  I do shot on full manual with the ISO set to 100 though.

Beautiful pics,  I love 29. 

Beautiful!

>I didn't think to set the camera to spot metering.  I do shot on full manual with the ISO set to 100 though.

 

At least for what I do I rarely get out of matrix metering.  Definitely spot metering comes in handy for low-lit concerts, plays, etc.  But I do shoot manual a lot of the time and for almost all night photography with a flash or otherwise.  With digital you can just keep checking the histogram until you get it right.  With film you had to know what you were doing.  When I'm taking event photos at night I put the flash on -1/3 and go around with the camera stuck on 1/15 at f/5.6 all night.  If someone in the middle of the photo is dressed in white, up the flash to 0 or +1/3, otherwise the meter will be fooled and underexpose.  As long as you're shooting RAW files you can be sloppy with the exposures like this, with jpeg's you'll lose a few shots due to extreme under or over exposure.   

 

Otherwise I'm impressed withe the D80, it really has an edge over the D70 in this situation with better tones.  The blacks and whites seem cleaner.     

 

I was shooting all JPEG that night.

Wow, they look great then for jpegs.  The way most digital cameras record jpegs is that they throw a contrast curve in there whereas RAW files are flat.  You have to adjust them a little most of the time.  But the payoff is being able to control the shadows and highlights.  If you have that mode where you can record RAW and jpeg's at the same time, many people will prefer the jpeg because the contrast and sometimes saturation is jacked up automatically not understanding the advantages of RAW files.   

I do have a mode to shoot in raw and jpeg, I just need a bigger memory card. Yes that is a poor excuse since memory cards are pretty cheap right now.

#16 makes my jaw drop.  Just stunning composition, beautifully done!

 

(Sorry if I'm late to the game here!)

 

To update everyone if not already announced, I didn't win.  Here are the winners:

 

http://www.cincinnatiusa.com/lightup/lightup.asp

 

What a crock...I'm not a big fan of any of those three shots.  Weak composition is my main beef.

I am not a big fan either but then again I am bias since I entered the contest.  I had submitted four of my photos and I didn't submit any from dusk.  I tossed around with entering the contest as "Cincy Images" but in the end I submitted them by name only.

Eh....

 

Why not some new angles?  Devou?  One should be more creative than that to win.

 

And that second one isn't very good at all.  I understand wanting to get the reflection on the water, but a perspective that makes the illuminated skyline so dimiunitive and secondary kind of defeats the purpose of the event.

 

First Place: J Miles Wolf

 

My Shot:

 

Second Place:

 

My Shot:

 

 

BTW, was there fireworks that night? 

 

 

LOL @ the winning shot having a huge plot of dirt land and parking as the centerpiece. Welcome to Cincinnati!

BTW, was there fireworks that night?

 

 

Reds!

Your shots were better than both of those! 

You got robbed dude!  I'd ask for a recall!!  Somebody get Ernst & Young on the line to verify the votes!!!

Wait...  was J Miles Wolf's photo even from that night?  Notice that National City Bank is not pink in his shot yet it was lit up in pink lights in my shot.  Paul Brown Stadium looks also looks empty and by the time the sky was at that color, people were already in the ballpark.

 

Oakie, the Reds weren't playing that night.  Great American Ballpark was lit up but there was no game so again where did the fireworks come from?

^Good catch...and yes, there was no Reds game that night.  They did however have Who-Dey written on their scoreboard though.

So, montecarloss....

 

You're saying that one of the winning photos is not even from the event and another seems to have been "touched up" by adding non-existent fireworks?  I would seriously look into this, dude.

Well, did the rules state that it had to occur DURING "Light Up Cincinnati" or simply submit a photo of a night skyline shot FOR "Light Up Cincinnati?"  Because adding in fireworks I really don't see a problem with (it's artistic expression, I suppose) but if the rules stated that it had to be taken DURING the event, then yeah, I'd look into it.