Midnight in Gotham City

State Theater, Ann Arbor, MI

Last Night I decided to venture out into Downtown Ann Arbor, to see if there was anything interesting to see.  The night was a bit chilly, but not too unbearable, and although the streets below were still pretty busy.....from the top of an eight story building everything was quiet.  The sky was a sort of reddish color that had quite a dramatic effect, like something you might see in one of the many comic book inspired movies that have hit theaters of late.

Above, the moon was very bright, and was casting a halo effect on the low hanging clouds that looked like some kind of cosmic worm hole that was slowly pulling the earth into certain doom!!

Creepy Halo around the Moon Last Night

My purpose wasn't to snap shots of the moon, I'll save that for another night, so I just grabbed a quick snap.

Ann Arbor is an interesting town....a nice mix of vintage, historic architecture mixed with newer, more modern buildings.  From my vantage point, the city looked like Gotham City, looking down at all of the rooftops below, with a few sky scrapers, towers and church steeples popping up here and there.  The dramatic clouds and the color of the sky certainly added to the ambiance. 

As I moved from place to place, the night air quickly dropped far below freezing.  There are many tools a photographer brings with him on a shoot, but my favorite for night time shots, requiring long exposures, on really chilly nights.......my remote shutter release and my cell phone!  Without it, I most certainly would have headed home a lot sooner, but since the remote has an effective range of about 30ft, I was able to sit in my warm truck during the longer exposures.  Having the ability to time exposures with a simple timer app on my cell phone meant that I didn't have to get out of the truck to check the timer on the camera to see when to close the shutter!

Ann Arbor seams to perpetually be under construction, and I spotted this construction crane from quite a ways away and knew that I had to grab a shot!  After I lined up the shot and set my exposure, I moved my truck a little closer to where I was setup, so that if someone walked up I could quickly jump out and get to my camera.  What I didn't notice, was that by moving my truck closer, it meant that the shadow of the cab would also be in the shot....... oh well, that's life!

Afterwards, I ended up at Bubble Island on University for their Purple Haze tea.  Not sure how I feel about tapioca pearls in my tea, but it was pretty good, and definitely a nice place to relax after a long shoot!

-MT