Night Photography By Justin

In the nigh of 3rd February, I went out with my friend HL for the night photography. That day was the first day of Chinese New Year, both of us wanted to do something special and have some fun. After the BBQ party with my roommates, we left Labrador Lodge for City Hall at harf past eight. Unfortunately, we had to go back to LL before eleven o’clock no matter how hard I begged my dear aunties and how many beautiful words I said to her. It was quit hurry, but none of us can control our irresistible impulse. On the MRT to the City Hall, HL repeated his suggestions to shot night pictures in Chinatown instead of City Hall for many times; after all it was Chinese New Yeaer. However, I did not think Chinatown really has an atmosphere of a hot and happy CNY. As I was kidding, I would rather experience the luxury and prosperity of capitalism in the beginning of a traditional Chinese New Year.

We chose City Hall, because City Hall is the political and economical center of Singapore. There are numerous skyscrapers, and during the night these moderm building of great hight were wrapped with lights of different colors. Those brands and names shown in illuminated light on the top of these skyscrapers such as Capitaland, OCBC were still shinny. At that night, City Hall did not sleep, but expressed another kind of attraction and beauty with a feeling of CNY. I wanted to shot some pictures of Singapore’s prosperity, and show them to my parents and friends.




We found a place that is covered by grass, and there a fine perspective opened out before us. There we had a distant night view of City Hall, and the beauty of night City Hall is fully expressed. We set up the tripod, fixed the camera, and began thinking how we should construct a picture, and how we should set up the camera. We agreed that in order to express the brightness of the night city, we must leave enough space for the dark sky and surrounding environments. Only when the lights were compared to the darkness, can the night view be bright and charming. We raised the front part of the camera up a bit and shot the picture at an angle of 35 degrees to the ground. At this angle, we could express the great height of the buildings in the picture. We chose to put the city at the right bottom of the picture so that there was enough space for dark sky to invoke comparison. The exposure time was set to be more than 10 seconds so that the city could be bright and shinny enough.

We failed many times because of the wrong settings of the camera and the wrong angles and positions of shooting the pictures. We tried hard to perfect all these things. When the picture finally came out on the LED screen, my friends and I got extremely excited. We did not expect the picture to be as good as this, and it was far beyond our expectation. When we saw the picture, we noticed the vague, white and soft bulks of cloud over the city. The shinny skyscrapers seemed to be wrapped in fog. It was really a wonderful accident. During the exposure, the cloud flowed over the sky softly, and this kind of slow movement had created the fantastic clouds like marshmallows. These clouds had made the picture unreal. The angle of shooting had made the city look like floating over the sky. It was like a mirage. My friend and I were so excited, and HL cannot wait to try again. There fore, he and I spent another 10 minutes to wait for another group of clouds to flow over and tried to shoot a picture like this of purpose. This time, he got a better picture, which was brighter and had more vague clouds.



In our life, sometimes we can notice some unusual beauty accidentally. Fortunately, I notice this beauty through camera and succeed in recording it.

PS: The picture descried in the journal is the last one. I found the casino (first picture) was quite strange; perhaps it is because the three buildings as a whole are not symmetric.