I have a pretty strange way of celebrating New Year’s Eve.

A good friend of mine was visiting from Canada and we met at the local Olive Garden for lunch. I had been trying to get some photos of the Oregon Capitol building during blue hour, but the fog was frustrating my efforts. As an aside, on Christmas Eve I went down there thinking it was going to be clear, but the fog quickly rolled in, the photos were still pretty darn good, but not what I intended.

After we finished our lunch, we went our separate ways and upon walking out to the car, I noticed much to my surprise that it was clear out. I raced home and loaded up my camera gear as quick as I could and headed downtown. Upon getting there it dawned on me that at this time of year the sun sets before the free parking time sets in downtown and I didn’t have enough quarters to give me much time on the meter. This is something that worried me during the entire shoot, but no one came by to check on parked cars.

It was cold and I can be pretty impatient, so it was a trying wait for blue hour to arrive. Not to mention, there was a cloud bank rolling in from behind me making me worried that the conditions I wanted might disappear before blue hour arrived.

Finally, the right conditions arrived and it was all I hoped for. I shot frantically. The only downside was that by the time I made it to a second location I wanted to shoot, it had gotten noticeably darker, and this only took a short walk to get there.

When it came time to post process all that was necessary on the key images was a little dodging and burning, primarily because the sky was too bright.

In the end, the resulting image was the best architectural image I’ve made.

Take a closer look at these images, or the images of the OR Capitol from Christmas Eve, or my architecture portfolio.