Day 336 - Street lamp and decapitated sculpture

This burst of morning sun on the windows of a building made photograph difficult but interesting.

In order to reduce the amount of light coming in through the lens to a reasonable level, I had first to stop the aperture down to its smallest: in the case of my little Olympus, that's f8. But that was just the first, easiest step.

Even at f8, there was still too much light coming in if I set the shutter speed at anything slower than 1/100th of a second. At that setting, the sun on the building still looked like a burst of fire but at least the other elements in the photo were starting to show.

At a slightly faster shutter speed, you could actually see the faces of the pedestrians. But the sunburst was still really strong. So I kept pushing the shutter speed higher, interested to see when the sunburst building itself would start to be recognisable. That happened at 1/400th of a second but this shot, the only I liked best, had a shutter speed of 1/500th.

I like the shape of the light on the windows as well as the dark shapes of the pedestrians, vehicles and signs in the foreground. I'm pleased with the balanced composition, especially with the street lamp left and the decapitated sculpture of the saxophonist on the top right of the picture.