Personal notebook
I photograph harbours, bridges and empty streets after dark, mostly around Noord-Holland. These pages are where I keep what I learn, so I stop repeating the same mistakes.
Rain is not the problem, reflections are. A two second exposure turns every puddle into a mirror of the sodium lamps, and the whole frame goes orange. I now underexpose by roughly a stop and bring the shadows back later, which keeps the highlights on the water from clipping.
The other lesson: bring a cloth. Every twenty minutes the front element collects enough drizzle to soften the corners, and it is invisible on the back screen until you are home.
Arriving in the dark costs an hour of fumbling. Walking the same spot at golden hour, marking two or three compositions and noting where the tripod legs actually fit, turns the night session into something closer to a checklist.
I wanted one for eighteen months. What actually improved the pictures was a heavier tripod head and the patience to wait out the wind, which costs nothing and fits in no bag.
