Last night I was driving home on Freedon Parkway from a shoot I’d just finished for an Atlanta-based aerial videography company when I came to the intersection of Freedom Parkway and Boulevard (yes there is a road here in Atlanta that’s simply named Boulevard) when I saw this site in front of me.

I was exhausted from having been on my feet shooting all day already, yet I still couldn’t help but take a left to make my way around to Jackson Street Bridge to capture what I saw in camera. I didn’t care to dig my big tripod out from the gear it was buried under in my truck – nor was I crazy about getting out one of the Canon DSLR’s I’d been shooting with all day already. So, I grabbed my trusty little  Lumix LX100 along with my Joby GorillaPod I’d bought for such situations – got out in the cold again – and captured this for your viewing pleasure.

While there shooting it I thought to myself that I was either completely nuts for getting out and doing something for fun – in the cold – that I’d just spent the whole day doing for work – or – that the old adage is true that if you do something you truly love for a living that you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

Kinda.

Anybody that thinks that they’re not going to have to work just because they have a passion for what they’re doing (especially in a field as competitive at commercial photography and most any other creative field) is setting themselves up for an eye-opening disappointment. Believe me when I tell you that us pursuing our passion in life as a profession is – work. We work hard at what we do, and think I can speak for most creatives in saying that sometimes the hardest part of it all – is not losing sight of why we started doing it to begin with. Not losing our love for it.

So, I try to stay in touch with the love I’ve had for capturing something or someone beautiful in-camera since I’ve been a kid by doing shots like this.

I’m also including a behind-the-scenes shot I took with my iPhone yesterday while in studio shooting for the aerial photography company. It’s kind of wild looking at it and thinking about all the gear and experience I used to shoot the job well for them, then I turn around and shoot something like the sunset shot above with nothing more than my little LX100 and a GorillaPod.

Edit: While I was there shooting there was a guy there on the bridge shooting the same shot that mentioned that it was too cold, and that he would come back and get the same shot when it had warmed up. I quickly pointed out that during the summer it’s not as clear due to the city smog and that it wouldn’t look the same.  But that’s not the only factor that comes into capturing this shot well:

1.)  As I already mentioned – the time of year that you capture this shot is key. Not just due to the smog issue I mentioned above, but the traffic. Later in the year it starts getting dark later – sometimes as late as 9:00 PM. Which means there may not be as many cars on Freedom Parkway passing under you to capture the light trail look you see here. But, around this time of year it gets dark around 6:00 PM or so. So, there is plenty of traffic around that time on weekdays. Sometimes there is so much that it can look like a parking lot and they won’t be moving fast enough to capture the light trails at all. You never can tell here in Atlanta what rush-hour is going to be like. Last night it just so happened to not be too bad by this point on Freedom Parkway, but enough traffic that was moving fast enough to capture the light trails from them with the sky / light being just about right.

2.) You’ve got to catch it when you have a nice sunset. Sometimes you see this scene when the clouds look amazing. And then there are times like it was last night when the sky just has a magical look to it. For those of you not aware of it – this is a very well captured view of the Atlanta skyline.

3.) To get those light trails you have to deliberately hold the shutter open for a long period – which means camera movement becomes an issue. You have to shoot from a tripod or GorillaPod like camera support. But, not only that, you have to capture the traffic going under you – with a long exposure – without having any cars drive by on the bridge behind you during the exposure – which causes the bridge to move some. This shot – which was a 13-second exposure at f16 with my ISO set to 100  – isn’t as sharp as it could be due to a couple cars that drove by behind me as the shutter was open. It still turned out to be my favorite of what I captured while out there, though.

So, like with so many other things in photography – and life – getting the timing right is everything.