It took me two separate attempts to capture this scene in downtown Telluride. On the first night, I was all set up in the middle of the street with a tripod when a storm rushed in. Within minutes, I lost visibility of the background mountains, and then the winds came howling.

On my second attempt, I made this image on a clear night. I shot many frames with the motion blur of yellow or red lights from passing cars. Traffic was sparse, however, and I only got incomplete light streaks. I opted to select a frame without passing cars.

My EXIF information was rather strange, as I was shooting a 10-second exposure at f16 at ISO 800. It’s still a clean image on the Fuji GFX, but four years later, I wonder why I shot at ISO 800. For example, I could have used ISO 400 if I had shot for 20 seconds. The lower the ISO, the higher the image quality. Perhaps I needed to shorten the shutter speed to capture a scene without any passing cars. The longer the exposure, the greater the chance of a passing car.

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