The Photoblog of Jay Williams

On one quiet evening, I stepped outside, while doing a little work around the house, but when I saw this scene in front of me, I dropped everything I was doing, ran inside, grabbed my tripod and Leica film camera, and hurried outside to capture the scene before any of the elements changed. Quickly, I found that my handheld ambient light meter was of no value, as it was simply too dark for it to pick up a reading, so I had to completely guess on the exposure. I ended up shooting 12 photos, at various shutter speeds, and a few different angles, hoping that one of them would turn out. Because I knew that if the image on the negative ended up looking anything like it did through the viewfinder, it was going to be an amazing photo.

After getting the negatives back, and holding them up to the light to see how they turned out, my eye was quickly drawn to this photo. It was by far the best exposed and composed of the bunch. The one second exposure at ‘/2 with 200 speed film proved to be the perfect combination. And now, after scanning the negative, and applying a few small level adjustments in Lightroom, you can see why I stopped in my tracks when I saw this scene in front of me. What a view!