Venice Nights: Sony A7 III + Sony 70-300

Empty Venice Canal Italy No People Long Exposure Night Reflection

Artist

My name is Roberto Perazzola and I’m a photographer based in Rome, Italy. Most of my portfolio of work is taken at night as long-exposure photography, since I love to capture the sleeping city, looking for the sound of silence. If you want to see more of my work, check out my Instagram!

About the Shot

The idea of shooting Venice at night had been on my mind for some time. On January 17th, I took a train with a friend of mine at 19:00 in Rome to Venice. We shot from midnight to 6 AM and we were lucky because it was a wonderful night.

This shot was taken in one of the hundreds of canals of beautiful Venice, on the way from the station to St. Mark's Square. I used my beloved Sony A7 III with the Sony 70-300 lens and an old Manfrotto tripod.

This was one of many shots. It was taken at 86mm as the focal length, ISO 100, f9 aperture and a 30-second exposure. The original raw was quite dark which was intentional. I wanted to avoid the artificial light being too bright. It was a very calm night, not cold, just very humid as it can be on a January night in Venice. It was shot just before 1 AM.

Post Process

To develop this photo, I opened the shadows and closed the highlights in Lightroom. I increased the white and slightly decreased the black, slightly adjusted the orange and yellow due to the artificial light. I then applied a Tonal Contrast filter from Google’s free Nik Software, specifically found in the Color Efex panel. This allowed the color-cast to pop slightly with selective application of the contrast.


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