Yu Garden


  • f11
  • 8s
  • 18mm
  • 100

  • f11
  • 8s
  • 18mm
  • 100
Yu Garden or Yuyuan Garden (simplified Chinese: 豫园) is a huge garden complex in the northeast of the old city of Shanghai. It is located in Huangpu district and is easily accessible by metros line 10 and 14 with the own Yuyuan garden station.
The Yu Garden bazaar is located at the entry of Yu Garden itself and hosts various stores and little shops, where (mostly) tourists purchase their genuine Shanghai souvenirs. The buildings all over the bazaar are beatifully lit at night and are always a beautiful sight and photography motive.
The Yu Garden is extensively decorated each year for the Chinese New Year with lanterns and figurines resembling the animal for the upcoming Chinese New Year. It's a must visit and delivers endless photo opportunities, if you are able to catch a moment where it's not amassed by thousands of people.
This particular building hosts a jewelry and jade store at the lower basement, and hosts a restaurant above. It is directly adjacent to the famous zig-zag bridge, that leads into Yu Garden itself.

The following equipment was used to produce this image:






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  • Shooting
    It was not particularly crowded on that Sunday evening before Chinese New Year 2022 so I was able to set up my tripod to get a long exposure without the necessity to increase ISO.
    As there were only a few people walking around, i figured the ghost images from moving people would not be so bad and I could possibly even leave them in post, which I later decided to do.
  • Subject
    As the building is relatively huge and I was maybe 10m away for the shooting, I needed to tilt up my lens in order to bring it onto the sensor in its entirety. This would bring the problem of tilting lines later in post, which I needed to correct.
  • Exposure
    The light was pretty bright and I decided to overexpose just a little so it would give me more flexibility later in post. As I was on the tripod I did not need to worry about camera shake, so I exposed the full 8 seconds.
  • Editing
    The editing in this particular image was quite minimal, as the colors were already hit pretty well. After straightening the vertical lines (had to tilt the camera up on the tripod), I basically added more clarity to make the colors more crispier. Some minor temperature adjustments and the lowering of the highlights and whites are the most prominent changes. I noticed one ugly light reflection in the center top, due to dirt on my polarizer which I needed to adjust in post.
    Finally I added a gradient from the lower part up until the building, to darken the ground floor and make it less prominent.