On a Midsummer night I went on a walk up Ocean Blvd in Miami South Beach photographing all the incredible lit up hotels and restaurants while getting some really cool light trails. Then I saw one of my favorite hotels, BreakWater Hotel, for its striking appearance came into view. Except it was not the actual hotel I was focused on, but instead its a reflection of its tower lights on a car parked directly across the street from the hotel. I set up my tripod and framed the two reflections I saw on the car with the hotel across the street. Since I was using my Leica X1, I couldn’t get a wide angle shot to include BreakWater’s famous light tower, but I got the best of both worlds by having both the main front entrance of the hotel in the shot and the light tower shining “Breakwater” in the car reflection.

This is probably my favorite nighttime shot on Ocean Blvd because of the really classy mood I was able to give the image in Lightroom. I bumped the clarity and vibrance as well added a good amount of vignetting to really focus the attention on the center of the image where the hotel entrance and outside restaurant is. The nice dark tones also help balance out the light trails in the street. This was a 15 second exposure which gave the motion blur of both the people and light trails which I think adds to the overall mood of the photo being taken late at night in the happening city of Miami on South Beach.