Tuesday, June 28, 2005

On Assignment: Detroit, Michigan-Day One

DetroitSpiritLoRes
"Spirit of Detroit" by Wes Aldridge

What an absolutely miserable day for seasonal photography. No sunlight and gray skies. To a photographer on a seasonal assignment, a day without sunshine is like a day without... you can make it through, but man, it ain't pretty. Needless to say I didn't capture a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph today.

Anyway, I did get this image tonight... and I like it! It was raining and windy and many homeless people begged me for money (I felt kinda bad because all I had was a credit card). I was in downtown--you guessed it--Detroit trying to get a shot of the suspended Joe Louis boxing fist sculpture. It didn't exactly work out due to the fist being completely black and not lit with flood lighting at night (sorry Coach, didn't mean to let you down). I walked the streets for a little while and came across this beauty. It is a statue titled "Spirit of Detroit" and it was wearing a Pistons jersey. I saw it on television during the NBA Finals and it was pretty memorable, unlike the Finals itself. It was purely by luck that I saw it tonight. Glad I did.

I think I got this exposure dead on the money. I have the shadows natural in the frame with the tungsten tint from the flood lamp illuminating the statue. But I also metered in a little fill flash that brought the image to life. ISO was set to 200 to get the proper f/stop and shutter speed combination, all shot on a tripod of course.