Sunset Series from the Empire State Building

For my first shoot of 2010 I wanted something special and decided to shoot a sunset series from the top of the Empire State Building, the former king of the skyscrapers. Actually, this shoot was planned long ago for this time of the year simply because that is when I knew the sun is in the best position for a balanced composition from this vantage point. (Note; the sun sets furthest left on Dec 21st, the winter solstice, and sets furthest right on June 21st, the summer solstice.) My goal for his shoot, which was very much pre-visualized and well planned, was to capture magic hour (30 minutes before and after sunrise or sunset) from the top New York City’s oldest icon.

As you probably know, pre-visualization is a result of seeing the picture in your minds eye before you go out to shoot it. It often requires planning and for this shoot that planning was all finding my window of opportunity including best time of year for the suns position, time of day, and weather conditions. I looked up the time of year when the sun will be in the position I want for this vantage point. I also waited for the ideal weather conditions - a clear day with not to heavy winds (strong winds this high make it tricky to get sharp handheld captures), and ideally a day outside of the holiday crowds. Knowing the conditions needed I simply wait until everything is right. It is a short shoot but even though this is not too far from home, it is still costly. Parking at the train station in my town, train tickets, and tickets to the top of the Empire State building cost close to $50, not too mention a half-day of time – but the view…

As for the equipment and technique, I used my Nikon D300 and fisheye lens for this series. I had to find the one spot at the top that allowed me to use a lens with a 180 degree field of view and not include the side of the building. I actually had to hold the camera outside the holes in the fence and perfectly align everything, which can be very tricky, especially after dark. I tilted the fisheye lens slightly up to capture the curve of the earth and also composed to place the horizon in the center of the frame to get a more normal looking landscape. For the finished post processed composition I cropped a little off the top to get a more balanced picture. Since the exposure range is greater than the dynamic range of my camera I needed to do hand held HDR’s. The get the sharpest captures with minimal movement from exposure to exposure I shoot in burst mode and adjust the ISO as needed, in this case it ranged from ISO 200 to 2200. Aperture size ranged from f/19 to create a sunstar, to f/3.3 to get plenty of light after sunset. I bracketed one stop above, normal, and one stop below for an extra 2 stops of range. White Balance was set at sunlight to preserve the blue in the sky while capturing the warm glow from the thick New Jersey air near the horizon. However, I also cooled some of the night shots since city streetlights are sodium vapor lamps and similar to tungsten lighting in color. Processing was done in Photomatix and punched up in CS4 including Topaz DeNoise3 to remove high ISO and HDR processing noise. The result was a series of about seven captures from 15 minutes before sunrise to 50 minutes past. Incidentally, if you go about 25 miles from where this shot was taken in the direction of sunset, that’s where I live.

You can see the magic hour series in my NYC Sunrise & Sunset gallery. Enjoy.