Blade and Reflection, Paramount Theater – Austin, Texas

Ever since they restored the blade, the brightly lit Paramount sign jutting out from the facade, this has become a must shoot for Austin urban landscapes at night. A few years ago, during the restoration of the Paramount, they added a new blade designed to mimic the original, which went missing many years ago. How one loses something this big is a mystery to me. It’s a bit of much-needed old-world detail in our homogenizing modern downtowns.

I’ve used the car reflection “gimmick” on a number of occasions to add visual interest in a normally boring part of a composition. It’s an easy technique for some added urban sparkle.

This image is courtesy of the DxO ONE that I’ve been talking about, optimally working in the preferred, for this camera, portrait orientation. This isn’t a very difficult photo to make since the bright lights illuminate the night. Even a standard smartphone should do a pretty good job, though you should underexpose slightly not to blow out the details. Shooting RAW and doing post-processing does add a level of finesse that requires extra work, however.

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