Photographing a Cityscape

You talk to any photographer and the town, the city, the farm that they live on, they know it very well. And so when it comes time to capturing images of those locations, generally photographers know the best places to go and what time of the day to go. But also one of the things that you'll find, especially in the medium is that there are some times when you need to get the quintessential shot, the iconic shot, for example, of a cityscape that shows, say, the sports stadium, the tallest building, the most iconic building in that shot. But at the same time whenever a magazine calls and wants to see shots like that they also wanna see other locations. So it's always a good idea for a shooter to visit those other locations at other times of the day.

And so here we are in Minneapolis right now, and I love the bridge that's underneath here, 'cause we've got these wonderful arches that take place. It's a lovely night shot, but we weren't able to get here at night. So we're here during the day. That doesn't mean that we're necessarily here at the wrong time. It just means that we may shoot this in a variety of ways in order to bring a different photograph of Minneapolis, combining it with the Mississippi River, which runs through town, in different ways.

So what this particular shot, as you look at it it's almost a monochromatic shot by itself. So my first vision of this is that I'm gonna convert this to black and white. And I always liked them when you get colorful images interplaying with black and white images in a layout. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it's nice to have the option. The other is that what the Stone Arch Bridge here, one of the great things about Minneapolis is our park system.

We have a lot of trees that mix with our waters and our urban landscapes. So the other option for me is to do a panoramic of this shot. I can start over here with the bushes. I can move towards the trees. I can scan myself all the way over through about six different images and see trees on the other side.

So it's one of these things that we can combine all of this information in a variety of locations, in an urban environment, without having to go get the same, identical shot that everybody else has gotten, even though you probably have that, but this is a nice way to be able to showcase other parts of your city, your village, your town, your farm. So go out and try a lotta different things, try a lotta different ways and locations, and you'll find out that, oh my gosh, you've covered the city really well. And you've also gotten to know your city really well.