Tag Archives: city

Downtown Portland, OR

[/caption] Recently I’ve had the opportunity to shoot Portland at night. I’ve been photographing the downtown area for several years but I had never been given the opportunity to take a photo at night looking east and at an elevated position. This spot puts me just over I-5 and just east of the Willamette river. This provides me with one of the best vantage spots in the city. I wanted to set my shutter long enough so I could get the best flash movements of the headlights and tail lights of the traffic moving about the city. The colors of the bridges as well as the many other on ramps and roads really gives this photo a lot of personality. To get this shot I was using my 12-24 wide angle lens. I had the focal length at 24mm in order to get as much in the scene as possible. Since the sun had set over an hour ago, I made sure to remove my warming filter and CIR-PL. I was using the shutter priority and had the shutter set at 30 seconds in order to capture as much of the streamers from the cars as possible. The F stop was at F11 and the ISO was at 400. The Exposure Compensation/White Balance was at -.3.

Last day of sunshine in Portland

[/caption] I had to go to Portland on the last day of our sunny weather so I could take some photos and enjoy the weather. The sky nor the sun did me any favors but it was nice to spend the day along the water. It really felt more like the middle of spring rather than the last week of February. Due to only a few of the vegetation blooming, I wasn’t very satisfied with 99% of my photos. The Willamette was pretty dark, which also didn’t help. However, I did find some great spots that I will return to once the trees and plants bloom more. Gotta love the Portland waterfront when the sun is out. Especially when it’s in February.