Every time I visit Singapore and go downtown, I’m struck by how neat the Louis Vitton building there is. As illustrated above, it sits right on the water and has a really interesting shape to it (I’ve stared and stared, assuming that it is somehow the L V of the logo… but I can’t make it work), and at night it has a nice golden glow to it, and actually twinkles with a bunch of little lights all over it. I’d never tried to get a picture of it, so this go around, since I was ignoring the Marina Bay Sands buildings, as I mentioned last week, I thought I’d give it a go. The sunset wasn’t as fantastic as last year (they don’t all have to be), but still nice, and I really love the city when the lights come on! Just what I was after.
Over the last couple of years of taking pictures of cities, I’ve noticed something interesting about photographing them. When I started, I would take a picture of the city before sunset or as the sun was setting, and then wait till the sun went completely down and take the same picture with the lights on, and then combine them such that it looked like all the lights were on as the sun was going down. There’s a lot of technical reasons why I did this (it all revolves around dynamic range, for the camera geeks out there), but as I’ve done it more and more, I’ve realized there is a point during the blue hour when the lights can all be seen by the camera, and not blown out (most importantly), all while the buildings themselves and the stuff around them are still visible. It doesn’t last long, maybe only a couple of minutes, but it does in fact happen. The other thing I’ve noticed is that I much prefer the sky to still have some blue in it, rather than just being black. This is of course a personal preference, but to me it makes it seem more ‘alive’.
Anyway, more from Singapore next week!
–Dan Thompson