Hi everyone,
I recently had the idea of doing a personal project. Something that would keep me shooting especially during the winter months. The idea I had was to shoot the smaller historic downtown areas in my home state of North Carolina. We have a ton of these smaller "historic" downtown areas. A lot of them look similar with this brick style architecture. I'm mostly focusing on the Main St. area of the downtown. Almost all of these towns have a Main St. It also helps me to focus on an area rather than trying to run around and capture everything. I'm calling this project "Main St. NC."
I want the photos of this project to all have a similar style. Buildings lit up during late sunset/blue hour, before dark. This presents its own challenge as this time of year blue hour does not last very long. I had to kind of hustle and I wasn't able to get all of the shots I wanted in 1 visit.
These are what I deemed to be the best from my first stop in this series. A small town called Roxboro. The great thing about this project is it can go on forever really. It's going to take me months if not years to visit and photograph all of the towns I'd like to. I may even end up revisiting some locations. When I've got enough towns maybe I'll put them all in a book or something.
Cool project Kyle and look forward to seeing more.
As you delve further into the project, I'd be curious whether you're finding that blue hour is in fact the best time to shoot these places or that each spot follows its owns schedule and "comes alive" at different times.
Yes, after doing the 2nd location blue hour just doesn't work for every spot. And this time of year it just doesn't last long enough to get all the shots I would like. I may end up revisiting some of these locations as well. I've just started with this project really and I'm sure it will change several times. My favorite shot from the 2nd location I did was a golden hour shot! But I do kind of want to stick to that blue hour lights on kind of style for as many of the shots that I can. I just love that look. But it is frustrating when buildings don't light up the way you want!
As Robert Tran stated, I wonder how different one scene would look shot from the same location from Night, Blue Hour, Golden Hour, Day, Golden Hour, Blue Hour and back to Night.
Now I am thinking of this as a project for our local theater. The big tree in front of the marquee would prevent a great shot as yours.
Very nice. It'd be nice to see the Kirdy shot without the vehicles. My first thought on the second one was to have the stoplight above the building... then I saw the third one!
This is a wonderful idea, Kyle! Don't know if you've ever looked into Kindle Direct Publishing (self publishing). You can download the Kindle Create app for your computer, then use it to make books to sell on Amazon. Create has a template for making photography books. You can self publish ebooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers. This would be a great idea for residents who love their hometowns. These photos are very beautiful. The lights and colors are wonderful. Look forward to seeing your progress through this project!
Thanks Jennifer. I have not looked into any publishing yet but that is very useful to know. Thank you!
To avoid the over-dominating Amazon, I create my books via Shutterfly because their download software is the one that I like the most. They periodically have an unlimited pages sale (unfortunately no more this year due to the upcoming holiday season). Their print quality is very good. I recently printed a 20x30 print from 5.6mp jpeg file (no RAW files) and it came out really good. I've printed 70+ page books for about $25-30/each. I takes a while to create something like this so I do it, don't order then wait till a sale comes. It's not as quick as you'd think it was. You can test it out with fewer page books for the $25 price. (Free shipping over $79.) It used to take weeks for them to print but now, it takes a few days and they use fast shipping.
I've also used blurb and lulu. Try them out. It's nice to have something in hand and you can give them as personal gifts rather than store bought crap...haha.