Clock Tower Evening

EOS 100D / 24mm EF-S

1/80, f8, ISO 200

I took this recently on the way home from a quick run to Centre to print something. It was a nice evening, though nowhere near this dark yet. I deliberately underexposed the shot and then used some editing afterwards to keep the overall image with that later evening twilight feel while bringing up the colors in the sky.

I am happy with how it came out. Last time I was taking photographs it was less common to edit your work before sharing, and in any case there was not a ton of online sharing going on. I never quite took the stance of “no editing” but I would say, overall, that I prefer to keep the editing fairly limited for the most part. There are some fantastic photographers out there who bring images to a very specific vision of theirs in editing. I tend not to like those results as much as more naturalistic depictions.

This photograph is a bit of an example of getting my cake and eating it too: the end result is rather dramatic, though in truth I did not do an awful lot of editing. I do love underexposing shots, and for this photograph it works very well, bringing the clock tower, and particularly the clock face itself, into clear view. The low sky behind it ends up being a winner: the light breaking through the clouds isn’t bright enough to eclipse the artificial lights helping to give the image some context.

So what would I change? I’m not sure… one could argue maybe that including the edge of the sports center at the right edge of the frame isn’t necessary. I could crop that out. But I like leaving things like that in; I like the idea of photographs feeling a little handmade and rough around the edges. If I can keep those things in while maintaining an isolated subject I’m pretty happy.