I had a sleepless night a few weeks back in Brisbane and as the family was away I was able to check out a few spots I'd been wanting to visit in the city center for night shots with river reflections. It turned out surprisingly successful, especially given the amount of traffic on the river on Friday night with party boats going up and down with all their garish lights - great for light trails.

I found a couple of look outs that created good places to shoot from and others under the Story Bridge itself.

The settings I ended up using was - 30secs, ISO 200 and f9 seemed to give the best results. I found doing a bracket a stop apart was most efficient as then you don't have to wait for each image to write to the card - this was significant as a lot was happening in each 30sec period and waiting for the write to complete meant I was missing things. I have since bought a remote release so I can use manual release for longer than 30 sec exposures.

I used my hand to block excessive light from bleeding into the lens as well as a lens hood.

For post processing I did some minor cropping and noise reduction through Light Room otherwise the in-camera images were good.

The only thing I would do differently next time is better scoping of locations so I can drive closer and walk less. I find it amazing how little time I have in my own home town to shoot for the joy - it seems always to be while away but this was a nice exception.