Night shot in Hood River, Oregon

I image that you’re getting a little tired of me saying that I always have a camera with me, but it’s true. Jasmine and I were having dinner at a restaurant that sits on a hill overlooking Hood River, Oregon and the Columbia River. As the sun went down and the lights of the town came on I noticed that there was still light on the Columbia River.

I used the Panasonic Lumix GX7 and the Lumix 12-32mm lens. I pressed the lens against the window of the restaurant to reduce reflection, set the ISO to 3200 and aperture as wide open as it would go and took this photo. The exposure was 1/20 second at f/4. I choose ISO 3200 since I know from experience that the slowest shutter speed that I can hand hold is about 1/20 second. From that distance with the Micro Four-thirds sensor I wasn’t concerned about depth of field so f/4 worked fine.

I adjusted the highlights and shadows in Lightroom 5 and then opened the image in Photoshop CS5 and converted it to black and white using Nik Silver Efex. I used the dodge tool in CS5 to lighten the river.—Mark Toal