Chicago at Night

[dakar92]

We finally got some decent weather here in Chicago, so I went out to try my first night pictures. I had a lot of fun taking these shots and, since I live downtown, I can see myself taking a lot more night shots in the future. (I will have to learn a little bit about night photography first though.) Anyway, any comments and criticisms on these two are welcomed and you can click on the picture to see the original if you should so desire.
http://dakar92.smugmug.com/photos/2623556-M.jpg (http://dakar92.smugmug.com/photos/2623556-O.jpg)

http://dakar92.smugmug.com/photos/2623557-M.jpg (http://dakar92.smugmug.com/photos/2623557-O.jpg)

[fish]

Nice...very warm tones.

[wxwax]

I like the reflection in #2.

I've found that shooting at night presents interesting challenges. There are extremes of light and dark, which makes it hard to get a balanced shot. Any light source blooms mercilessly. For example, the lights at the top of the left hand building in your second shot look blurry, and I think it's because of the blooming from being overexposed.

I'm still working out a solution. But I'm trying the digital blending technique: take a light shot and a dark shot, then blend them, preserving the lights from the dark shot. Not as easy as it sounds, because the blooming lights spread their light.

I also find it difficult to compose a shot, because I can't really see what it looks like. And I'm fed-up with the camera's auto-focus performing poorly in low light. I'd do a manual focus, except that the G3's LCD screen isn't much use for that sort of thing, especially in the dark.

One last thing: it doesn't look like you did a manual white balance. I'd be really curious to see what those shots look after a manual white balance. You didn't happen to shoot in RAW, did you?

[gus]

One last thing: it doesn't look like you did a manual white balance. I'd be really curious to see what those shots look after a manual white balance. You didn't happen to shoot in RAW, did you?
waxy...how would manual white balance change the shot ?

[wxwax]

Look at the top shot. There are large flat areas on both buildings that might well be white. Instead they're totally orange. I realize that they're tinted by the sodium lights. But I'm wondering if a manual white balance might fix things like that, and change the color cast of the photo.

I keep meaning to do it myself, but I forget, and get lazy when I remember.

[dakar92]

One last thing: it doesn't look like you did a manual white balance. I'd be really curious to see what those shots look after a manual white balance. You didn't happen to shoot in RAW, did you? No, I didn't shoot in RAW and I didn't do a manual white balance. I may try the manual white balance next time. Or I might try RAW but I have to learn a little something about processing RAW images first. That's on my (long) list of things to do.

By the way, in the first shot, the building on the right is orange and the building in the background on the left is pinkish. The foreground building on the left is pretty close to white.

Thanks for the feedback, it definitely helps.