St Basil's Cathedral
Jan, 2016Views
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Contest Finalist in Iconic Places and Things Photo Contest
Peer Award
Absolute Masterpiece
Superb Composition
Magnificent Capture
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Behind The Lens
Location
St. Basil's Cathedral can be found in Red Square in Moscow, Russia near the Kremlin. Moscow has many beautiful cathedrals, but St. Basil's is the crown jewel in my opinion. Photos don't do it justice.Time
The Russians were able to freeze out Napoleon and his men for a reason. It gets really cold there! This shot was taken on a cold, windy February night. I'm thankful I didn't lose any fingers to frostbite while I was trying to take this shot!Lighting
The long exposure really enhanced the light in this shot by turning the lights from the many lampposts into stars. It appears that there are stars on top of stars due to the proximity of the lampposts to one another. The lights coming from Red Square also helped to illuminate the cathedral.Equipment
This was shot with a Nikon D600, a Sigma wide-angle lens, and a tripod.Inspiration
Before visiting Moscow, I researched places that I wanted to photograph, and St. Basil's was at the top of my list. I shot it several times: at night, in the daylight and in the fog. The night shots are the ones that turned out the best.Editing
Since this was shot in HDR, quite a lot of post-processing was done. First, I merged the shots together in Nik Software's HDR Efx Pro. I then finalized the processing in Lightroom: adjusted color sliders, increased the saturation a little and sharpened the shot.In my camera bag
My bag includes my Nikon D600, a prime lens, a wide-angle lens, a telescopic zoom lens, several SD cards, an extra battery, a cable release, filters, and my tripod. I also now carry a Fujifilm XT-2 and metabones adapter so I can mount my Nikkor lenses on the Fuji.Feedback
Usually advice would include things like the best equipment and times of day to shoot a particular subject; but in this case, the best advice I can give is to dress appropriately. I'm a firm believer in taking numerous shots with different settings to find that one shot that just works. This approach is time consuming, though, so if you are shooting on a cold Russian winter night, you won't be able to last for very long if you don't layer, layer, layer!
