Evening Dust Storm

[midimick]

You may have heard about the big dust storm in Australia the other day. Well, we had a repeat performance come in this evening, and the combination of the red dust and the street lights made for this really eerie effect.

One thing, as a newbie, I would be interested in, if possible. This was taken at night with a 30 second exposure, so that the street and the dust could be easily seen. However, doing this has totally wiped out the street lights themselves, turning them into great orbs. How would one go about getting the scene, but also reducing the glow from the lights, so that perhaps the lamps themselves could be seen?

Possible? Or asking too much?

[mj702002]

I can't answer your questions...but this may 'bump' this post up so someone who knows can!!!!

[rjoh]

Hi Midimick - this is my thoughts in response to your question.

Because the intensity of the street lights are much greater than the reflected light in the rest of the scene they are generally going to blow out in a low light setting such as this. Some experimental changes you could have possibly made to help achieve the result you asked about were to adjust the aperture settings, time the shutter was open and ISO.

Also I have never use this technique - but maybe using a tripod and taking various images at different camera settings and then using post production software to create one HDR image out of the others would preserve the definition of the street lights.

I don't know what type of camera you were using but the shot is also fairly noisy due to the low light situation and the long exposure.

Didn't that dust just go everywhere and get into everything? But sure made for a rare photographic opportunity - Cheers and happy scene hunting...:)

[mrdoug]

Nature's way of creating an awesome "effect" before post-production.

Incredible capture for sure!