Night-time downtown OKC 8-17-11

Last night I went walking around town, as I am won’t to do, and although I didn’t come away with anything revolutionary, I did learn a few of things.

1. I really enjoy walking around with a camera and tripod. It makes me feel far more important than I would otherwise. This is probably because I pretend to be a cool ninja commando when I carry gear. When you slam down a tripod, people move. And then you get look at them thinking, “Yeah, that’s right.”
2. Said tripod is imperative. I used to think I was awesome enough to shoot in lowlight situations by hand, but unless I want to set my ISO to 800+ to keep the shutter speed up – I don’t, normally – the tripod is a must. Seems really simple, this, but I used to not take the tripod because of the added weight and time to set up a shot. I learned last night that it’s less of a hassle than I had otherwise thought, and I figured out a quick way to collapse the thing with one hand and move on.
3. My remote timer has a button to immediately take images. Fancy that! All this time I thought I had to set an interval, but there is this really poorly labeled button that will just take a shot at any time. The more you know, I guess.
4. Night time exposures are fun, but can be frustrating. I feel like I understand the concepts of taking OK shots, but I need to figure out if/how to reduce light starbursty flares. This set I took last night also is in a general need of subject adjustments. Instead of the mantra “What haven’t you seen?” that usually accompanies my internal monologue while shooting, these shots are more of: “Hey, look at this sh*t!” Although I am partial to that shot full of shadows.