Goin’ Places At Sunset

I pride myself on finding new angles to capture the city of Pittsburgh. I spend way too many hours on Google Earth and my Photographer’s Ephemris looking for spots that I haven’t been to, places that I might be able to get to, and where the light might be when I get there. Pittsburgh has so many wonderful little neighborhoods snuggling right up against the city separated by a few interestingly designed roads. This view from Troy Hill compresses a neighborhood, some of those roads, and the city into one frame. I chose an extremely long exposure to blur the clouds as well as the road’s travelers. I’m most pleased with the layered quality of this image. When you shoot with a telephoto lens, you can compress foreground elements into background and make them appear closer to one another. The houses in the foreground are 1/4 mile away, the PPG building is about 1 1/2 miles away, and the church visible on Mt. Washington sits at a distance of 2 miles. The “base layer” of the clouds has Mt. Washington in front, then the PPG, Fifth Ave. Place  and other downtown buildings on top, and then the sister bridges over the Allegheny. Next are the houses on River Ave. In front of those are the roadways. 576 and all of its on and off ramps with a glimpse of E. Ohio St closest. Finally there are the houses at the base of Troy Hill. All of this neatly packaged into one frame.