From the Oklahoma City National Memorial, 5 days after the 20th anniversary of the bombing.
Beautiful night in OKC with fast-moving low clouds. Fairly minimal editing: adjusted curves, a little selective desaturation, cloned out a couple stars, and a little dodging of the foreground.
Statistics
Place: 8 out of 60 Avg (all users): 5.9589 Avg (commenters): 7.3333 Avg (participants): 5.6364 Avg (non-participants): 6.2250 Views since voting: 802 Views during voting: 157 Votes: 73 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
First of all, congratulations on your 8th place result. The long exposure has enabled you to create an image with impact that has clearly been appreciated.
For me the sky with its motion blur from the clouds is what gives this image its impact, I also like the startbursts of the lights from the small aperture you have used. I'm not too keen on the wide angle effect on the buildings but I think if you had used perspective control you would have altered the whole image to its detriment. Equally, the more exaggerated an effect is the more acceptable it becomes.
The biggest problem I have here is the amount of overexposure from the illuminated areas. I tend to agree with your commenter that combining separate exposures may have been a better choice or perhaps a reversed graduated filter to reduce the exposure of the lower half may have worked better.
As a stranger, I need your description to confirm that this is indeed a monument, and the time, I assume is not a clock as I thought, but a permanent reminder of the time when the deed was done? So, given all that it obviously fits the challenge well.
All of this is rather academic given your result, well done.
i like idea of this one. I don't feel you got the results you may have wanted. I feel these long exposure night shots require multiple exposures to drill down the shadows and the highlights, then for that to be blended together. As I wrote on another image that I didn't score very well, I'm always hesitant to comment critically, because you never know the circumstance of the shot. If you're not familiar with the process I'm mentioning above, feel free to hit me with a PM and I'll send you a few links to some photogs who are perfecting the technique. I think this subject is worth the effort.
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