DavidZisky

Rotterdam

Rotterdam at sunset

Rotterdam at sunset
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Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland, NL

upload_date

Nov, 2018

Views

845

Likes

+48

Awards

Contest Finalist in Drone Lovers Photo Contest

Contest Finalist in Above The Earth Photo Contest

Peer Award

+15

Absolute Masterpiece

Top Choice

Magnificent Capture

Superb Composition

Emotions

Impressed

Top Ranks

Top 20 rank week 1

Top 10 rank

Top 10 rank week 1

Top 30 rank

Top 20 rank week 1

Behind The Lens

Location

The photo was taken over Rotterdam, You can see a few of it's most important icons - the Erasmus bridge, Maas river and modern Kop van Zuid area.

Time

Just after the sunset. I saw earlier the clouds forming on the sky so I was suspecting that sunset that day may be beautiful with orange glow projecting on the bottom surface of the clouds and indeed - it was one of the most beautiful sunsets I've seen.

Lighting

Primarily I wanted to make a picture of the city coming up to life after sunset. So I was focused on showing all the city lights while still having some information in the shadows. B sunset was so great that I decided to make a few shots earlier to combine sunset light and city lights

Equipment

DJI Mavic Pro 2. Nothing else.

Inspiration

I love shooting cityscapes, so I tried to use every opportunity to do so. When it comes to long exposure drone photography the most important is as less wind as possible. That day there was almost no wind at all so I knew I have to fly and do some shots.

Editing

For this particular shot, I used two and stacked them together. Not for exposure tho, but to get a bigger picture (wider POV). Postprocessing involved mainly recovering shadows, decreasing brightness in some areas (mainly sky and ) and I've spent quite some time on trying to get the colours right - on one way I wanted to get that warm sunset vibe, but on the other city at night is very cold and bluish. I tried to combine those two worlds.

In my camera bag

Normally for cityscapes, I use both of my cameras - Panasonic G9 and Sony A7III. I use Panasonic mainly during daytime and for timelapses while Sony for blue-hour and night shots. When it comes to the lenses I have Samyang 14mm and Sony 16-35mm for A7II and Panasonic Leica 12-60 + old Canon FD 70-210 for G9. Besides cameras, I almost always use tripods as I prefer long exposure shots, in the bag, there are also always some extra battery, memory cards and a bar of dark chocolate ;)

Feedback

I tried to reproduce a similar shot a few times myself. But in this case technical skills are not enough. It mainly comes to clear (without haze) sky, nice clouds and no wind (when it comes to drone photography). You definitely want to make shots just after sunset when the city is becoming already light up but the sky is not completely dark yet. Too early - You won't get city lights, too late - You will get only city lights because there will be not enough light to have some information in darker areas. So really right time here is the key, other than that - bright sky and (still) relatively dark city requires either camera with wide dynamic range or making two (or more) shots with different exposure and combining them in postprocessing.

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DavidZisky

DavidZisky

Rotterdam

Rotterdam at sunset

Behind The Lens

See more amazing photos, follow DavidZisky

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