Christmas Gift
MJ and I didn’t have any family events or dinners at
Christmas this year. So we
took a long weekend including Christmas and went to Miami as a small Christmas
gift to each other. It was nice to
get away from the cold weather for a few days.
While we were down there, we visited a bunch of places such
as South Beach, Bayside, Bal Harbor, Downtown Miami, North Miami and a 1,000
year old Monastery Cloister. I got
a ton of great pictures at just about every stop.
Park Central Hotel – Art Deco District
Tonight I thought I would share a picture I took about 30
minutes after sunset of Park Central Hotel on Ocean Drive in South Beach. This strip of road has all kinds of old
cool Art Deco buildings with hotels, bars, shops, etc… They are interesting looking during the
daylight, but at night they turn into super cool neon buildings.
This area is hopping with traffic (both cars and people) so
it is almost impossible to take a picture without the traffic getting in the
way. I thought about aiming the
camera up to avoid the traffic, but I wanted to include the 1920’s antique car
that sits in front of this hotel (see bottom left). So I made the best of the situation. I positioned my camera across the
street with a tripod on the sidewalk trying to get as much height as I
could. I did this hoping to shoot
the picture over as much traffic as possible. As you can see, I was shooting over a parked car. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I
captured the hotel sign reflection in the roof of the parked car, which added a
cool element in the photo.
Because it was dark, I used a 5 Bracket exposure set (+2,
+1, 0, -1, -2) will all of them being fairly long exposures. This helped get the correct lighting
(exposure) and it helped make the moving traffic (people and cars) disappear
from the photo. All you can see
from the traffic are the headlights and tail lights from the cars. You’d never know it from the picture,
but the sidewalk in front of the hotel was packed with people walking. With the long exposures, they disappear
making it look like the sidewalk was empty. You can also see the clouds moving in the photo because of
the long exposures. Anyway, I
think there are a bunch of cool effects in this photo and it gives you a nice
look at a “HOT” area of Miami.
I hope you enjoy this pic.
