Shooting in the City

Attention all producers!

New York City is a tricky place when capturing photo and video content. It’s full of huge buildings, busy tourists, garbage trucks, taxis, and reflective skyscrapers.

This means that there is a TON of different shooting environments, types of light, and situations when you need to adjust your manual settings. To shoot different scenarios it is obviously helpful to bring multiple lenses at various focal lengths, but it goes beyond this.

If you’re shooting video you’re going to need to buy a variable neutral density filter. A neutral density, or ND filter, is like a pair of sunglasses for your lens. It will allow you to keep your shutter where it needs to be while you shoot at a lower aperture. This will let you get those perfectly exposed shots, while still giving you a shallow depth of field between your subject and the background (cinematic shots with your model and blurred skyscrapers are very nice).

Lastly: practice, practice, practice. You won’t regret it. While you are shooting in New York City, you need to be ready to quickly adjust your settings for new lighting situations.

-Sean Haney