Pic(k) of the week 40: BRUGES AT NIGHT - THE VENICE OF THE NORTH
Last week I visited one of the best known cities in Belgium; "Bruges" also known as Brugge in Dutch. Although it has been popular with international tourists for a long time, the 2008 movie "In Bruges", made it even better known. It is the capital and largest city of the province "West Flanders" (West-Vlaanderen); the region I'm originally from in Belgium.
Along with other northern European canal based cites like Amsterdam and Saint-Petersburg, it is sometimes referred to as the Venice of the North. Attracting millions of tourists (lots of Asians) every year, local businesses are obviously severely hurt by the current Covid-19 pandemic. The streets and canals were remarkably empty when I was there; normally still a busy time of the year. Great for night cityscape but not sustainable for a lot of smaller businesses. Lets hope tourists find their way back to this amazing city once the international European borders open again!
After having set up my new Leofoto Tripod, I patiently waited till the blue hour light was just about right. Just as I had clicked the shutter, I noticed a family of white swans (which Bruges has lots of) entering the frame from the left. I quickly set a higher ISO on the top left dial of my X-T3, to allow for a faster shutter speed and clicked another frame. The image below consists of the main frame shot at a slow 10s shutter speed combined with the faster 1/15s frame to freeze the motion of the swans.
Image details:
- Fujifilm X-T3 with XF16-80 f4
- Main frame: ISO 160, 10s, f13
- Swan frame: ISO 4000, 1/15s, f4
- RAW file development in Lightroom Classic
- Photoshop CC to blend the swan image into the main frame
- DxO ColorEfex Pro 4 for optimal contrast
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