Urban Sky

This is my first long exposure photo of the “built environment.” Taken looking up at a cold and windy sky, at the National Air and Space Museum. It was a 30-second exposure, taken with a “Big Stopper” filter, which lets in only 1/10 of the available light, allowing for much longer exposures — and a cool blurring effect on anything moving — than without it.

To create this image, I used Nik Sliver Efex 2 for the black and white conversion. But rather than just one conversion, I did several, with a particularly dark one for the sky. Then with vector masks in Photoshop, I used the dark conversion for the sky only.

The image below is the “original” (with just a bit of enhancement to the blue sky).

Which one do you like more? I’d be very happy to hear your thoughts (in the comments below, if you’d like).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 at 11:50 pm. It is filed under black & white, long exposure, the built environment and tagged with abstract, air and space museum, architecture, B&W, big stopper, black and white, blur, built environment, clouds, glass, long exposure, reflections, washington d.c.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.