A Night On the German-town

Amazing things can happen with a camera AFTER the sun sets. 

I still remember when I was first learning about photography, while living in Hawaii. I would stay out super late, practicing long exposure shots after dark. I was fascinated by the effects I could create with a still image and a long exposure. It seems I haven’t been practicing them as much lately, so I was floored when my sister Kaylee suggested a night shoot together.

Both of us had shot in Germantown before, but never at night. So we packed our tripods…..except Kaylee may have forgotten to bring hers :(. That put a little damper on the night, but thankfully we were able to share mine. A good tripod is essential to night photography.

Our first stop was Bicentennial Park. As we were driving by this vantage point, I realized that I’ve never seen any photos taken here before. It’s such a fantastic point of view, with the bell towers in the foreground and the capitol building in the background.

As I was walking from the last shot, I noticed a huge slab of concrete in the grass. We stopped and read it, and decided it’s a really cool idea – a time capsule buried below to be opened in a hundred years!

We thought we’d have a little fun with some light-painting. I simply turned on the flashlight on my phone, set the camera to take a 20 second exposure, and jumped and waived my hands across the frame :). Kaylee had to stand really still so she wouldn’t be blurry in this one. 

For this one, we both picked a color, Googled it to find an image on our phones, then turned up our screen brightness all the way. Any guesses who chose which color?

We wandered around a few more quiet streets in Germantown. 

The newest Barista Parlor location is sporting a pretty cool wall of windows.

Our last stop was the Cumberland River across from the Downtown skyline. This is easily one of my favorite spots in all of Nashville. I’m pretty thrilled with how these shots turned out. The rainbow of colors coming from First Ave., coupled with the prominent Batman building, and smattering of stars in the sky makes for a very dynamic image.