"Night Dreams"

"Night Dreams"
©David A. Ziser

OK, I know this isn't a wedding image but it's still one of my favorite photographs that I captured last week in Las Vegas.  It has almost a “M. Night Shyamalan” feel to it – mysterious, scary, foreboding. Here is how the image came about.  When we turn in at the end of the day, LaDawn likes to pull the drapes to keep all the extraneous light out of the room.  I, on the other hand, enjoy falling asleep to the glittering lights all around.  Whether it be Las Vegas, New York, where ever - I love seeing the lights.

During our Las Vegas trip, I did manage to keep the drapes open a few of those nights.  And as I lay there looking up at the ceiling I was very much intrigued by the "light play" going on in front of me.  I loved the random play of the various sized and shaped parallelograms on the ceiling.

What's a photographer to do when you see something pretty cool? Grab a camera, of course!  That's exactly what I did.  Because of the size of the ceiling designs I needed the widest view possible and loaded up my camera with my Sigma 8-16mm lens.

Next was the challenge in framing up what I was seeing.  I wanted to show the source of the light with necessitated that I include at least part of the window into the composition.  The light was quite dim which meant really slow shutter speeds and very high ISOs.  I was handholding the camera and even at my super slow shutter speed, I got the image I was looking to capture. A wonderful and rich textured abstract.

A little tweaking in Lightroom 3 and I had the final presentation.  The bright window hints at a mysterious presence entering from the left and spreading across the room.  The shades and shapes of light reflected offers a cool light dance to the viewer.  The image draws me into it and invites me to explore what I see even more.

OK, many of you may think I'm really reaching with today's post,  and many of you may think it's just a lousy photograph, and a few including myself may still enjoy the abstract result.  Hey, beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder ;~)

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with Sigma 8-16mm super wide angle lens at 8mm, F3.5 @ 1 second (handheld), ISO 3200.  Enjoy!  David