This past Saturday, the conditions were perfect during the day for a long exposure – deep blue skies, fluffy white clouds interspersed and wind to move everything above. When I headed out to gather signatures on Atlantic Avenue (see yesterday’s post for info on that), I also made sure to pack up the camera bag and tripod. Immediately after finishing, I headed to Abbot Hall and walked around the building looking for a new vantage point from which to shoot. A number of ideas wouldn’t work due to the wind gusts but I finally found myself at this spot looking up at the building and its tower thinking this would be perfect.
I set up with my widest lens and put the 10-stop neutral density filter on it – that cut about 99.9% of available light and allowed me to slow the exposure down. Setting the aperture to f/16 and iso to 100 gave me 25 seconds with which to play and I tried to time it so that the clouds overhead and the reflected light in the stained glass windows added an extra element of depth to the scene. This was easily my favorite and I quickly settled on black and white. By doing so and adjusting the tones in the black and white mix, I was able to push the blues deep down to black and set the tower apart from the sky.
Abbot Hall looks somewhat imposing when viewed in these conditions – but I’m really happy with the end result.