I finally got around to try something new, something I always wanted to do, but never really had the time or equipment to do successfully.
Last night everything came together perfectly - I have my tripod, my DSLR and a beautiful evening.
I rushed down to (Yoeinaru) 여의나루 station at about 5:30pm, just before sunset, as I knew it's about 35 mins away from school with the subway, excluding a huge transfer - I estimate it's almost a 1 km walk just to transfer at Jongno 5 -Ga station.
I finally arrived at my destination about 40mins later - the Yeouido Park in Seoul right next to the Han River. During day time, this park is filled with families and children who's out in the sun spending their days together. At night time, the scene certainly changed a bit - groups of friends sitting and having beers can be seen, couples sitting on the grass, and watching over the city skyline or even friends camping over for the night.
For me, it was all about the lights of the city - hence it's the reason I came to the park, with all my camera equipment. I luckily managed to find a spot with with a perfectly flat surface, an ideal place to mount my tripod.
After having setup everything, I realized - I have never done something like this before. Long Exposure shots is completely new to me. My first shot, came out completely blow out, white. Then I realized, I need to bump up my aperture to at least F/10, it did the trick, but it still seemed light. After about another 5 mins of trying to figure it out, I finally found it - ISO was set to AUTO , which means the it will automatically adjust the ISO based on the natural lightening outside - in fact, it made itself like 1600 iso, which is a big mistake for these kind of shots.
I manually pulled it down to 100 and brilliant, I finally have the balance! From there, you basically just place with the shutter time and aperture.
Here's some of my best shots of last night:
