Around 10pm I was wandering the city, looking for something to shoot and saw this little scene. I set up the tripod, tried a few different angles, settled on this one and waited for the cars to stop driving past and the people to walk through. I took five shots at different exposures, from way under exposed to way overexposed (bracketing). I did this because on the middle, or 'main' exposure there were going to be areas that are way too bright (the Jack London sign was completely white) and others that will be pitch black (like the sky, top right). So now I can take the sign from the most under exposed frame and ‘brush’ it into the middle exposure and take the lighter sky from one of the over exposed ones. I did this to many different areas, all over the image, just so I could get it as close as possible to how my eyes saw it.
Image ID: 1269