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Category: travel

DTLA Long Exposure

As soon as I arrived to Los Angeles, I set my eyes on this place in business area of the city, from which you can shoot rush hour traffic with skyscrapers in the background. Though I lived not far from that place for some time, I could not make myself go out for photo shoot in DT. My indecision eventually was supplemented with rumors about the dangers of the area in the evening hours. Business center in a daytime becomes a criminal center after sunset. Instead of guys in suits walking the streets there appear different sorts of psychos. But the place is so cool…

Well… finally I found courage and took my wife with me to cover my back, we headed to the 7th street that runs through the Harbor Freeway, which connects downtown with Long Beach. Having a heavy tripod with me makes me feel more secure. I have set the equipment when the sun was still above the horizon and had to use ND filters so the exposure was 100-200 seconds and I had an opportunity to observe the scene as close to us a 40 years guy very smugly tried to spit on the cars that were passing below… Turned out all right. We were not interesting for him.

After all the best photos I managed to take about 40 minutes after the sun had disappeared behind the horizon. No filters were used. Exposure was only 15-25 seconds. Diafragm f/8.