Turning a business trip into a small photo adventure

I had to drive to Nashville the other day for a business meeting. Unfortunately, I don’t travel much these days, especially to central and western parts of Tennessee so I wanted to take this opporunity to do some photography. I remembered that the Natchez Trace Bridge is close to Nashville. I googled for images of the bridge to get a sense of how it looks like, what’s around it and what opportunities it gives for photography. Next step was to research using google maps and street view. I knew I would arrive to the bridge after sunset so I wanted to take a nightscape / astrophotography photograph. At the end, I narrowed it down to 2 options: shoot the bridge from the road that runsunderneath it or take pictures from the bridge.

After I arrived, it turned out that the road that is under the bridge is much busier than I thought it would be so I immediately headed to the bridge. I rather quickly found a good spot, I put on a high visibility reflective jacket on (for safety), grabbed a flashlight from the car and started shooting long exposures. I also met a fellow photographer, Scott Dubose of Photographers Artistry. Scott does astrophotography (something I have very little knowledge about) and we talked for about 30 minutes or even more.

In a nutshell, it was an extremely good day because I ended up with a picture I like and I made a new friend!

Main Street Collierville Historic Town Square at Night

I think Collierville's Historic Town Square, which is just east from Memphis, is a perfect place for night photography and a group photo walk. I really enjoy the town square for night photography because it has a huge variety of subjects, from small family-owned stores to an old gas station and even a historic locomotive and train cars. Collierville's town square is relatively small, which is why it's also great for group night photo walks. Night photo walks are particularly challenging for an organizer because setting up tripods, cameras and nailing shots always varies between the participants and therefore it's difficult to keep a group together. Collierville's Historic Town Square is great for night photo walks because even if someone stays behind, he/she can easily catch up with a group because, well you're at the square :).

An old locomotive at night at Collierville Historic Train Depot (Collierville Historic Town Square)

For these reasons, I chose Collierville's Historic Town Square and I organized there a night photo walk last week through the Memphis Digital Photography Group meetup. Around 1o persons showed up, which was a perfect number or participants because less experienced participants felt comfortable to ask questions. I'm also pleased with feedback I received after the photo walk - everyone wants more night photo walks :)

McGinnis Services Station at night - Collierville Historic Town Square

Visual Impressions of Porto - Night Panorama Photograph

This is the third part in the photography's mini-series on Porto, Portugal I titled 'Visual Impression of Porto'. You can read and see the previous two blog articles.There is really not much to say about this Porto's night panorama photo. Some of you might be interested how I took this night panorama. The panorama you see is made out of 7 separate pictures that were stitched together in post-processing. Each picture was taken on a tripod in long exposure. Here are the Exif details: ISO 200, f/7.1, 8 sec. exposure.

The panorama by itself is quite big, actually it's huge: 15450x4093 pixels.