Night/Street Photography @ DOCO Sacramento

Several nights ago my family went to bed early as they were still jet lagged from our trip to Austria. Wide awake on my own, I decided to grab my camera bag and take a short drive from Folsom to Sacramento in order to shoot a bit of street photography in Downtown Commons (DOCO).

Pictured: Woman walking through DOCO just before the rain

I parked at the parking garage next to the Golden 1 Center, mounted my 35mm 1.4 GM Lens onto my Sony A7Cii and hit the streets. DOCO has a tremendous amount of light at night due to the massive electronic billboards and modern street lights - perfect for night photography. I walked through DOCO to K Street, where I captured a bit of life in Sacramento on a Friday night.

Pictured: Life on K Street

The 35mm GM Lens excels in low light situations since you can open the aperture all the way to ƒ1.4, still, I decided to stop down to ƒ4 in order to capture just a bit more detail in this photo since the mural in the background is so nice. I generally prefer higher shutter speeds, as they make for more crisp, sharp images. I also haven’t really made friends with motion blur yet, but I had to lower my shutter speed in order to get the exposure correct with my aperture at ƒ4 and my ISO at 6400. That said, I really like the slight blur on this mans left foot as he steps in front of a beautiful mural on Merchant St. 1/60s is usually much slower than my preferred 1/250s shutter speed minimum, but this photo is teaching me that a little bit of motion blur can actually add something to the image, rather than detract from it.

Pictured: Man walking in front of mural on Merchant St.

Shortly after the picture taken above, the rain started. I decided to make my way back to my car when suddenly the purple beam lit over the Golden 1 Center, looks like the Kings had just won their away game. People all around began chanting “light the beam!” and it was exciting to see locals getting excited about our basketball team again. I really appreciate these moments to myself, as a father of two small children it is rare to get alone time. I’ll have to do this more often.

Till next time, thanks for reading!