This one's about two image-related issues.

The first is the number of times I've looked across the harbour at night to see the bright, burning neon lights, photographed them... and gotten them into PhotoShop to find those razor sharp lights reduced to red or blue fuzzy blobs (albeit with cool looking reflections on the harbour).

I am therefore bound and determined to discover the technique(s) for getting sharp city lights. In official experiment #1 (as opposed to "dabble" ones like 91_2987 Night Fuel Times 3 (PBase link only at the moment)), it meant leaving the 24-105 workhorse with its f/4 limitation off, and hauling the 50mm f/1.4 prime out for some rare outdoor activity. However even then it was necessary for me to take several of its images and whack them into an HDR file. The images were all shot at ISO 800 at f/2.8 between 1/50th and 1/250th of a second. In an ideal world I'd like to have tried this at other AVs as well, but wasn't able to. I had single shots at several exposures and exposure combinations, but had to make a call on which AV to use for the HDR attempt as I had to shoot between cars driving along the road (I was on the other side of it) and had to do it while there were no cars driving in or out.

The second issue is one particular image which is without doubt one of my favourites; Edward Hopper's Gas. If you haven't seen it and don't want to follow the link, it's a scene of a rural Mobil service station as the owner closes up for the night. The station is the only source of light as darkness encroaches on the surrounding forest; it's a very isolated and lonely image.

Now clearly this service station (gas station, petrol station, call it what you will) is not out in the middle of nowhere; it's in the middle of suburbia with a house right behind it. But I know of one Mobil station that might give me some good Gas-like images after I've got my technique down. However it's over an hour's drive away down a freeway, and while Cindy Lauper may have "drove all night", I certainly ain't until I'm sure that the trip will be worth it. This one was only about 15 minutes away, thankfully.

However I'm under a small amount of time pressure as Mobil is looking to sell its service stations in Australia. It's only been stopped from doing so by competition concerns... so far.