I've been practicing taking night pictures (this was my first attempt down in South Beach) and I'd like to see some really good examples of basic night shots so I know what goals I should work toward (nothing fancy like panning that I'm not ready for yet).
You seem to have a good grasp on how to expose, and your white balance actually looks very natural. You may find that the result is more pleasing if you "get the red out" by adjusting the white balance a little to the cooler side. If you are shooting in RAW, it's as simple as adjusting a slider. If you are shooting in JPEG, you'll need to get it closer to right in-camera.
I like the composition on your image. It's not a stunning scene, but it is well composed, a pleasing shot.
Thanks to all of you. It's really helping me to look at the camera settings for these photos. I definitely know where to start next time I do night shots.
I haven't really played w/ RAW pictures yet. Maybe I'll test it out first with some night shots.
The first two were shot the same night as the 3rd one, in truth I shot the 3rd one first and then literally turned around 180 degrees and shot the mountains behind me which are the first two in this post :)
One cool thing about night picturess in general is that they leave you a lot of latitude to screw around with them in post processing.
I hammered the contrast and saturation around, ran it through the tone curve in the HDR converter to get the effect I wanted in the pools of light on the bricks, and then hit it with a canvas texture just for fun.
It was raining, and that's always a big plus when working with the lights at night......VERY good for reflections!!!
