Today’s photograph is another example of an image that I saw online and thought I could try to replicate. And like one of my previous attempts at imitation, I again didn’t do as good a job as the original, but attempting to do so was a good learning exercise.
I had seen the original photograph online long before I took this shot, and had it in the back of my head as an image to try. I knew it needed to be taken late in the evening, and I knew also that it was a wide angle shot. When the opportunity arose for me to take the photo myself I was working from memory though, so there’s clear differences in framing between the two shots.
I ended up taking it on my way home from the studio in Dublin Camera Club one Thursday evening. I was getting the Luas, and had my tripod with me from the studio session, so decided to set up the photo before getting on board the tram.
I was using a 17-50mm lens set to 17mm to frame the shot – I suspect the original was taken with a 10mm or 12mm focal length.
The exposure was challenging – not least because I couldn’t keep the street lights out of frame, and with any reasonably long shutter speed to properly expose the tram and the background, the street lights were going to go to pure white.
Ideally I’d have had a filter to help darken the light, and in hindsight I should have at least cleaned my lens to reduce the effects of flare on the final image, but what I did do was use a small aperture to get those lights to be star-burst shaped in an attempt to at least make them somewhat aesthetic.
The final shot came into place once the pedestrian traffic died down and I could get a relatively clean frame, though if you look at the background you can see some ghosts of people passing the entrance to the Fitzwilliam Hotel.
The end result is a poor imitation of the original I wished to emulate, but it was good to try all the same.
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