“One evening after finishing work, I looked out of my hotel room window and saw a long traffic jam on the expressway below,” says Koichi Miyase, a Japanese freelance photographer. “I was struck by how the cars’ lights flowed like a river through the city’s buildings.”
Miyase often uses his smartphone to capture “casual” scenes. “I’m attracted to them because you can edit photos and post them all in one place on social media.”
Using his phone’s regular editing feature, Miyase made what he calls “simple adjustments” to the night-time image of Osaka, which he was visiting for a magazine interview and photoshoot.
He had to overcome two challenges to get the photo just right: eliminate as much visual interference as possible from his hotel room, and avoid camera shake. “I turned off all the lights, closed the curtains, and took the picture from the space between the curtains and the window pane,” he says. “I set the camera to HDR mode (smart high dynamic range) and held the phone firmly to avoid shaking.”
Miyase counts himself fortunate. “You only encounter this kind of scene in this particular location at a certain time of the day on certain days of the week. You could say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime shot.”
