During Christmas, I was back home on the East Coast visiting family in New Jersey and New York and was presented with an interesting photo challenge while at the top of the Freedom Tower in New York City.
We arrived 104 floors above New York City at the Top of the Freedom Tower just after sunset. The views were absolutely incredible and I, of course, wanted to capture them on my Sony A9 and not just on my android phone.
Of course, shooting through a glass window is never ideal, but the reflections of exit signs, cell phones and iPads for tours were all making it extremely hard to get a great shot of New York City Below.
As you can see in the top right of the image above there was a lot of reflections up in the top right corner. Once the sun was fully down, I decided on trying some creative ways to block out the reflections.
Tripods are not allowed up at the top of the Freedom Tower unless you get a press pass. Since I did not have a tripod, I put my camera on the ledge and took off the lens hood to get the camera as close to the glass window as possible and made sure the camera was perpendicular to the glass and not at an angle.
I then put the camera into a 5-second timer mode, so it would take a picture 5 seconds after I pressed the shutter. Once I pressed the shutter I quickly threw my jacket over my camera to help block out any reflections. With this silly trick I was able to get a decent shot of New York City below:
My one big mistake was letting the crowds get to me and I rushed the shot. I was so excited about getting rid of the glare that I forgot to take a second and double check the rest of the setting on my camera and shot this at 6400 ISO with a 1-second shutter speed. I wish I took a couple at a lower ISO and longer shutter speed to cut down on a little bit more noise.
