Stephan's Dome, Long Exposures, Panorama

Tourists River in Vienna Old Town, City Centre

Different topic today.

Total slow down from concerts, no landscapes, no nature. Today heart of Vienna city - Stephan's Dome. For anyone coming to Vienna it is I believe number one place to visit. To be honest, it is not my favourite place to visit and and shoot. 12 months a year regardless of weather conditions, this place is packed full with tourists, tons of people and limited space.

The dome is massive and surrounded by buildings all over and there is no single spot where you can really get proper angle to shoot it in full view.

Stephan's Dome, Vienna

So today's challenge was to get decent front full view and get something different showing people but also trying not to show them at the same time.... I have not found a way to fully eliminate people completely from the frame (during a day) but at least I can blur them and show them as ghosts, which can represent river of tourists. So I started with long exposure approach. It is still bright, 1-2 hours before sunset so what does it mean long exposure? Well something like 30s, 1 minute or perhaps even 8 minutes. Today I heavily used 10 stops neutral density (or grey) filter. I also experimented with infrared filter but am not happy with results. There was not enough green around which looks nicely white with infrared.

So I got to Stepahn's Platz and tried to blend myself within. Walked here and there and looked for something that can act as foreground for non-typical Stephan's Dome picture, and it should be in front of main entrance. Found it - sewer cover. Now it is time to get the camera low, as low as possible. When I sat on the ground and started to set up the tripod and played with framing people around me looked at me like if I were some sort of UFO or USO - Unidentified Sitting Object - to be more precise. Well, it is their problem....

Jerzy Bin @ Work
On the ground

Around this time when I was about to get down and sort out what and how to shoot, my friend showed up - Vitaly. We had photo chat and thanks to him... hehe he captured me at work using my phone. THANKS!

Stephans Dome, Vienna

Started with 24mm lens to get sort of wide shot but at the same time not too wide to have less distortion. Wanted to show the sewer cover and dome's entrance with blurred people passing by. At the same time sun got quite low and was right behind me. So upper part of the dome was way brighter than ground in front of which in fact was in the shadow. So on top 10 stops ND filter I mounted 2 stops ND grad positioned around the base of the dome, and finally even on top of that I put 1 stop ND grad to darken top of the frame  illuminated by setting sun. Exposure time at ISO 100 was 4 minutes.... I like the result, for sure something different to typical snapshot. Tourists are there but in this example they look good, they even add life to the place.

Actually before this 4 minutes blurred tourists picture I shot 5 pictures for panorama to fully show dome's entrance. Handheld 5 pictures and stitched together. Full version shows buildings on both of my sides but I cropped them and went square. 5 pictures shot vertically with 24mm.

Stephans Dome, Vienna

Then I swapped to 16 mm and played with the scene. In this scenario even such wide angle does not work too well. The main problem is distortion. I do get whole dome in frame but it looks like space rocket. (In post processing I corrected a bit lens distortion to have some more realistic view.) Second problem is that I do not have 10 stops ND filter for this lens with 82mm thread in front. Eventually I will need to get one.

As a work around I put 3 stops ND pro glass from Lee and Lee square polarizer which takes about 2 stops. So I was able to block around 5 stops of light. Closed aperture to F22 and set ISO to 50. This allowed me to shoot at speed of 15s. Slow, very slow, but not slow enough. Here you can see tourists way more clearer. 

On the other hand I like illumination of setting sun behind me. Oh yes, I also used 2 stops ND grad here to darken the sky and towers. This is single shot. I am always trying to get a shot in one go without blending or HDR. Exposure blending is the last option for me.

Today I was able to cope with filters.

All in all good practice.

Thanks Vitaly for the shots!

Cheers

Jerzy