Living in a big city like Barcelona, it is very hard to take pictures in the downtown where no one is on the street. I can imagine how it should be in Hong Kong or even in New York !!! Sometimes, passing on the street, I told myself “it will be a great picture on this long and big street” and after taking it, I thought again “what it can be without those people because it seems that they foul up my shooting”. Of course, I can always find a street where nobody is here but it will never be big or main streets. The good point to shoot those streets is that you give to the viewers the impression of a ghost town or an abandoned one within a modern city !!! |
Can you imagine taking a picture of time square at New York where the only moving thing is the wind !!! The impact and the impression of emptiness that you will create !!! Well I will say it is quite impossible except using a software to eliminate the people, to have good influence on mayor or to know someone who has…
Let’s forget about time square… let’s talk about something more possible for people like us. Depending of the city, there are possibility to take empty main streets. How ??? During the morning very very soon or very late in the night between 4h and 6h AM.
You have to choose between to wake up very earlier or to not sleep at all !!! It is something surreal taking pictures during this time because streetlights are not yet switched off, the sky has a different shade, the trash is still on the street…
All those details make to create an abandoned effect or who knows, a zombie town !!! If you are at the scene 1h before that the sun starts to rise, you will have time to prepare yourself and after enough time to take photos before the first living being will be on the street. You don’t need to take a lot of things, just your camera and your tripod and better if you have a panoramic one to capture all those huge empty spaces.
Normally better to configure your camera with an ISO 200 and a shutter of f/8 or less. Of course since I can’t predict the weather, the sky… you have to adjust it according to your environment.
The best places to create a great atmosphere of “ghost” are for example large streets, long streets with high towers, curved streets… and details like parked cars, a bench with trash, a spilled garbage… but the best is to find a place with an open sky because the heavy and dark clouds, not only they will give you a density, but also a great intense and interesting colors of the dawn. Above all, let’s run your imagination !!!
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