Golden River Walk – San Antonio, Texas

Here’s one last snapshot from my night stroll on the San Antonio River Walk. This area by the Hilton is halfway between the park like and party like extremes of the River Walk.

The Hilton Palacio del Rio is an interesting building, architecturally. It was built and occupied in a record 202 working days for the 1968 World’s Fair. This 21 story 500 room hotel was constructed modularly. Each room was pre-built within a concrete shell and slid with a crane, into a skeletal structure.

I prefer and set the warmer colors to create the rich golden tones of the building and rippling waves. Unlike my first two River Walk photos, this area was bright enough for me to shoot at ISO 200 with a 0.2 second exposure. Hand held, since I was tripod-less, that night. I underexposed at a dark -1 1/3 stops to preserve the highlights. The shadows were then recovered in post-processing.

Because I shot at ISO 200, I could manipulate this photo aggressively without much noise concerns. The details of the hotel seem well preserved and I’m satisfied with the way it came out, though photographically, I suppose the image isn’t particularly earth shattering. I suppose it’s more of a technical demonstration of low light night shooting than anything else.