DUMBO

No, this is clearly not Disney’s cute little flying elephant, but a district of Brooklyn between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, rebranded by the enterprising property developer who coined « Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass » as a cute acronym. Now it is a tech startup centre of excellence and one of the most expensive sections of Brooklyn.

I chose to present the image in black and white as a tribute to the iconic Brooklyn Bridge.

Monochrome Architecture

The photograph was taken on the night of the recent combined “supermoon” and “blood moon”, an hour prior to the eclipse. Since the colour version draws the eye more to the bright moon than to the structures below, I converted it to monochrome to emphasise the man-made structures over nature and to highlight the Brooklyn bridge, whose age is more in keeping with black. Equally is camouflaged the modernity of the swathe of recent building in DUMBO.

Development

After applying a monochrome treatment to the original Raw file, the most delicate issue was to balance the brightness of the moon with the darkness of the land and water. This was achieved by applying shadow lightening to the lower half of the image, defined with a Selection Gradient. In this case.

The tool gradually fades in strength from bottom to top, thereby making a gradation in the effect of the shadow darkening.

It is interesting that sharpness is acceptable from near to far in this image, despite the application of an f4 aperture, but the start of the image is, in fact, about half a mile from where I was shooting.

Camera: Nikon D800

Lens: 24-70mm f2.8G Zoom

Focal Length: 70 mm

Focus Mode: AF-S

Autofocus Area Mode: Normal

Aperture: f/4

Shutter Speed: 1/4s

Exposure Mode: Shutter Priority

Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV

Metering: Matrix

ISO Sensitivity: 800

Fixed on Tripod with camera bag as counterweight.

I confess that I must invest time in investigating Brooklyn during my next New York trip, it is truly worth it, and I don’t mean just for the views of Manhattan!

Copyright Paul Grayson 2015