Cityscape From Pedestrian Bridge at Metro Margahayu Bandung

Bandung city offers many cityscape spots as almost none for landscapes. From Twilight evening sky as a backdrop for vehicles lamp on the street to vintage buildings on Asia Afrika & Braga Street. Or Great Sunset and blue sky on Pasupati Bridge downtown. But I still can't manage to capture those. And just "satisfy" to get the view near home. And the favorit spot is the pedestrian bridge above Soekarno Hatta Street on Metro Margahayu, Bandung. View from about two stories above the street allow me to capture the flow of the traffic while sunrise or sunset become the sweetener. It is hard to find a clear view in Bandung morning nowadays. March and April still in rainy season. Usually we can get a very beautiful sky in a sunny morning after a rainy night. But not always. I just count on my luck, as I can only go for a photo hunt on weekend. If the magnificent clear view sky occurs on weekdays, then farewell to great photo. :). 

This is one of the capture. I manage to take this shot using an Olympus E-PL5 and a Micro Zuiko Digital 9-18mm f/4-5.6, taken at about 10mm to avoid vignetting caused by the filter holder in front of the lens. As usual, a "5 stops" (2 and 3 stop) gradual ND filter used in this scene to balance the exposure of the highlight in the sky and shadow in the ground.

To use the gradual ND filter, actually we have to do the centerweighted metering to the sky and to the ground to measure the different exposures between them so we know how many "stops" we need for the gradual ND filters. But as I always only can manage to get the shot after sun is high in the sky, I convincingly always put the 5 stops in front of the lens. Exposure sets in manual mode and we use the ground metering measurement, with a little positive or negative tweaks according to condition occurs in the field.

But sometimes I used the aperture priority mode. I shut the aperture to make the speed slow enough to capture motion effect at vehicles on the street. And I override the exposure compensation to positive or negative until I get the desire effects. As I can't use a tripod, I always be careful to get a speed that won't result in blurry pictures. In my Olympus E-PL5, I still can manage to get clear shot at a speed of 1/2 seconds handheld at 10mm. Not a proffesional kind of techniques at all :).

The 3 photos above are using the tobacco gradual filter behind the 3 stops ordinary gradual ND filter. The tobacco itself behaves as an about 1.5 to 2 stops gradual filter with heavily "sunset color".

These are view to the west:

The last photo was taken at sunset with an Olympus OM-D EM-5 and Panasonic 7-14mm f/4 lens handheld.

And last but not least is the photo of the bridge itself :).