Toronto Skyline - CN Tower

[Robert Watcher]

Started our anniversary mini-vacation yesterday in Toronto. After arriving in the city, we settled into what the host calls our “Designer Home Stay” that we found on Airbnb. Our action packed day felt like we were back in Central America - so exhausting, exhilarating and purposeful compared to our boring rural small-town day to day routine.

Google was amazing in helping us find a location in the city to get to last night, where I could capture the Toronto skyline. Arriving before sunset I set up my tripod and used a 150-600mm equivalent lens to reach across the water. All of these exposures are 10-20 minutes long in Live Composite mode - to gather any light that got added as lights in buildings came on and car lights in the distance streaked (without worrying about the length of line or overexposure). I took some frames starting while there was still some brightness in the sky, and then some starting after it got dark.

 

[Robert Watcher]

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[Asher Kelman]

Fabulous!

I am so pleased that you as Anne are both in an energetic back to normal phase of life again.

Imagine how Covid 19 has limited the fun and growth of so many millions of people and likely set back many children and students in their education and readiness for a career and life ahead!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

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Robert, this is splendid. That tower really makes the skyline so distinctive.

The Live Composite has painted in the stationary boats very well, but, in that 20 minutes there seem to be no passing boats on this occasion!

Can one do an exposure for the water and bracket the “Live exposure mode”?

Asher

 

[Robert Watcher]

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Robert, this is splendid. That tower really makes the skyline so distinctive.

The Live Composite has painted in the stationary boats very well, but, in that 20 minutes there seem to be no passing boats on this occasion!

Can one do an exposure for the water and bracket the “Live exposure mode”?

Asher

there is no bracketing. You control what you want to show by starting the exposure while there is still a little light. That was one of my options with the first picture taken just before full darkness. A few minutes into the exposure it was completely dark and yet the view of pic on screen still showed the sky and water lighter.

in this case, the glorious lights of the city didn’t start coming into full effect until at least half an hour after it was fully dark. I am very pleased with the results of both versions for different reasons. In fact when I get home I will prepare the dark image so that the dark areas are even blacker. That is the striking artistic effect I want with this version. The version showing sky and water is one that would be used more for advertising pieces for the waterfront.

 

[Asher Kelman]

In the lighter one with the water discernible, obviously one gets no detail of ripples in the water except in ideal lighting.

But IF that was in your wish list then I can see one could composite the optimum dark skyline with ripples lit by some imaginary moonlight.

I wonder how that would look? One would need to expose the water while it was still light, (at a fast shutter speed), to get the details of surface ripples.

I love the picture as you have presented it, but I would wonder how adding detailed water would look, as I recall such detail when I photographed the River Seine in Paris way after sunset!

Asher

 

[Robert Watcher]

In the lighter one with the water discernible, obviously one gets no detail of ripples in the water except in ideal lighting.

But IF that was in your wish list then I can see one could composite the optimum dark skyline with ripples lit by some imaginary moonlight.

I wonder how that would look? One would need to expose the water while it was still light, (at a fast shutter speed), to get the details of surface ripples.

I love the picture as you have presented it, but I would wonder how adding detailed water would look, as I recall such detail when I photographed the River Seine in Paris way after sunset!

Asher

the water looked ugly actually Asher. It was choppy and brownish looking. The smoothing from long exposure was desirable. As you can image, there are few locations to capture this setting. there was no backlighting or rim lighting to cause reflections. As well the buildings are too far away from the edge of the water to have any impact as far as light reflections. I worked with what I had and have results that I have desired to get of the Toronto cityscape - for years.

 

[Asher Kelman]

the water looked ugly actually Asher. It was choppy and brownish looking. The smoothing from long exposure was desirable. As you can image, there are few locations to capture this setting. there was no backlighting or rim lighting to cause reflections. As well the buildings are too far away from the edge of the water to have any impact as far as light reflections. I worked with what I had and have results that I have desired to get of the Toronto cityscape - for years.

…and your effort worked fabulously! It’s just perfect for selling to the City!

Iconic!

Asher

 

[Robert Watcher]

The skyline from the other end of the city. Anne & I pulled out our lawn chairs and settled in for a bit to relax and grab some long exposures.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Robert,

Your effort paid off Splendidly!

What a well designed landmark structure!

Such a place-making structure really helps define a City’s visual identity. I believe it must be uplifting to look up and say, “That’s ours!”

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The block of blue lit lines of windows on the right helps to provide balance and it’s embedded in the lit architecture of so many skyscrapers like setting a heel in a diamond beset brooch!

I look forward to visiting myself.

Asher

 

[Robert Watcher]

Last Thursday I ordered in a 40 inch Metalic Print mounted on black styrene - from my lab WHCC. It was delivered this afternoon (Monday) and I am so pleased with the result. I really have no idea why such a big deal is made about creating large prints with smaller sized sensors. My Olympus Micro-4/3 camera was just fine, by my standards anyway. As well I could take into consideration negatives that would further degrade image quality - - - such as not using an extremely high quality prime lens, atmosphere introduced by shooting from a very large distance across a ravine using a long 600mm equivalent lens. As well, I shoot only in JPEG. I am very happy today. It’s been a long time since I printed big.

 

[Robert Watcher]

I was quite pleased that my retouching is not noticeable in the large print. While I don’t have an issue with the peace symbols on the CN Tower (related to Ukraine/Russia I believe) - -— I really didnt want that on a large print lining my wall that will have a lengthy stay there as a piece of art. In Affinity Photo, I copied bits from the central part and used the Warp tool and Layer Masking to blend everything together naturally.

 

[Robert Watcher]

After I got thinking about how far away I was shooting from to the CN Tower as I was shooting the print reveal video - - - I decided to measure on Google Maps. It turns out that I was 4km (2-1/2 miles) away with the grassy knoll viewpoint. And surprisingly the pics we took on the first night on the water shore, were almost twice the distance from the CN Tower at just under 7km (4 1/4 miles)

 

[Jerome Marot]

Google was amazing in helping us find a location in the city to get to last night, where I could capture the Toronto skyline.

I am a bit surprised that it worked for you. During my last trip (pre-covid...), google apparently noticed I was not at home and searches would only list tourist traps.

 

[Asher Kelman]

It’s amazing how good search tools are. That’s how Putin’s poisoners of Navalny were tracked down: using readily available tools!

 

[Jerome Marot]

It’s amazing how good search tools are. That’s how Putin’s poisoners of Navalny were tracked down: using readily available tools!

Google search tools are really good, but there is a catch. Google wants you to only find sites which brings them money.

So, basically and for me it works in that way: when I search for stuff at home, I usually find what I want, but I reset the cookies from time to time.

During that particular trip, I could not reset the cookies. I had been asked to help a team who used a google spreadsheet for keeping track of progress. As I only had a tablet with me (an iPad), I installed google spreadsheet and re-activated an old google account. This is where I found out that google, contrary to what I am used to on the iPad, has found a way to log you in on all their apps, including the browser and google maps. So for the trip I had to be logged in everywhere, not just the spreadsheet. I did not want to log out and find out that it is not possible to log back in when abroad. Logging in from a new location often triggers some kind of safety lock (a problem I had on a different trip).

Before the trip, I searched for interesting places to visit and found a few. But, silly me, I did not note or bookmark everything locally on the tablet. During the trip, the same searches would mainly give me tourist tours as results. Google maps were equally bad. Back at home on a different computer without being logged in, the results were again usable.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Is it worth asking for search options like “at home”, “roaming” etc or they already know the issues they cause from online complaints and just optimize their marketing function for ad income?

 

[Jerome Marot]

We are talking about ranking of results here. Google searches typically give several pages of results and what mostly changes when entering the same query at home and abroad is the order of the results. But it obviously makes a world of difference whether what I am actually looking for is at page one or at page 997.

Google ranking is a trade secret and the object of considerable interest by so-called "search engine optimizers" whose mission is to ensure their customers end up in the top searches. Google is not likely to tell me anything about the ranking, even if we suppose that I had a chance to ask and being answered by an actual human and not a computer system.

Google query language includes a range of options to refine the searches (to be found under "google advanced search"). I am not aware of options defining what the searching user can be (e.g. a local of a particular city or a tourist at the same place).

 

[Jerome Marot]

We can actually make an analogy. Being a tourist in remote countries, one is often approached by a local offering help. That person is always young and apparently helpful, knowledgeable of the surroundings and people, invariably male in the middle east, often female in the far east and always provider of unexpected advice. Tourists who follow their advice usually get apparently unique commercial offers, be it jewel stones, antique artifacts or, depending on local customs, services of a more personal nature. The story does not always end up well.

Google, Tripadvisor or Yelp are actually just the same, except that they know your name, your address, the name of all your friends, your hobbies and tastes, how much you earn and how much you have in savings.

 

[Jerome Marot]

Back to the subject photographed here. The CN tower pictured here was built in 1976. It seems that this kind of tower were quite popular in that era. There is a smaller look-alike in Munich, the Olympiaturm. Although it bears the name of the Olympic games (1972), it actually opened in 1968.