Social media is a special place—you can help a person on the other side of the world by just typing on your phone or computer. This past week, I featured Daniel Cheong‘s photography on my site and my social media channels. I thought it would be fun to work it into a series, since I love photography. So I reached out to Daniel and asked him to recommend a few photographers of cityscapes that he admired, and he quickly recommended David Bank. Social media is so incredible—I was able to meet two exceptional photographers from across the world.
When I look at the photography of David Bank and Daniel Cheong, my first question is: How did they capture that beautiful image? I laugh because I get kind compliments on my Instagram and other social media channels, and many of those people ask me the same thing. For me, I take photographs more by feel, and for me, photography is a hobby.
Here are a few photos I would like to share from David Bank’s collection.
You can find more of his work here: Facebook, Flickr and Website.
I wanted to learn a few tricks from these photographers, and I asked David if he would share with my photography-enthusiast followers some of his photography secrets with us.
Growing up in Berlin and moving to the United Kingdom in 2005 David Bank was exposed to great culture and historical landmarks that proved to be the spark for what would become his lifelong passion: photography. Here he lets us in on some tricks of the trade.
“I like shooting cityscapes at dusk, during the so-called Blue Hour. The good thing with this time is that, no matter the weather, any urban setting always looks quite striking with the last bit of daylight and the city lights already switched on. It’s even better if it just stopped raining. Then the roads and surfaces act like a mirror, producing all kind of reflections.
Before I go out, I think of a good site to shoot. I get there earlier to scout the location, to find the best angle so that I’m not wasting time once the sun is down. I always take a tripod and, for the rare occasions that’s not possible, I have a bean bag with me which can be quite useful in museums and churches, where the use of a tripod is not always allowed.
All my shots are done in fully manual settings, starting with F11 and choosing an appropriate shutter speed. I use spot-metering to get my exposure right, and tend to rather underexpose a little bit for not getting parts which may be too bright. Shadows can be recovered easily in post processing, whereas burned out areas are lost. I am not a big fan of HDR, purely because I am not good at it, so I try to get the exposure right on the spot. Back home, I usually lighten the shadows a bit, straighten my verticals and use the re-sharpen tool a tiny bit for the upload version. That is basically it. Job done.”
Thank you, David Bank, for sharing your beautiful photos and time with us.
If you would like to see which other photographers I featured this month, visit http://ow.ly/q07e3 #GlobalLuxuryTravel #Ad #JWMarriott
