Day 28: When night turns to day

No, not another sunrise photo. Instead, another movie set photo. Standing on our balcony, I noticed a tall crane about three blocks away, with spotlights mounted on the top platform. After dark I wandered down the street, hoping to get a better look and saw that the block containing the Hollywood Theatre was blocked off for filming, police directing traffic as necessary at the call for action. The overhead lighting wasn't quite daylight but it was incredibly bright, and much brighter than light of the full moon.

There wasn't much to photograph at street level so I wandered away and took to the alley behind the stores on Broadway where I was able to get alongside the crane-mounted lights. Had it been a dry night there wouldn't have been much to take a picture of, but there was a little bit of moisture in the air which caused the beams of light to be visible. Plus there appeared to be a smoke or dry-ice generator up on the crane, showing up the beams even more clearly. It reminded me a bit of being at Niagara Falls at night.

I tried a few shots, trying to balance length of exposure with the ISO setting, and eventually plucked up the courage to try a one-second exposure, hand-held. I didn't have a tripod with me, but I was able to lean against the corner of a building for stability. To my amazement several of them worked out, good enough at least for showing in a web browser. In case you're wondering, the little dots in the sky are stars.

Turning night into day