Beijing SOHO Night

SOHO is a famous commercial complex that features a really unique design in Beijing, China. But to appreciate its beauty, you have to get to a higher elevation and bird-view the building. This is actually pretty hard because all the buildings nearby require ID card to get in, and even if you managed to sneak in, most of the doors to rooftop are locked.

 

To take this photo, I tried three different buildings before sunset and I could only get to the rooftop of one of them, but the view there was not good. Almost before I decided to head home, I tried one final building, which looks kinda old. I sneaked in following a delivery person, took the elevator to the top floor, and I saw the door to the roof was also locked. BUT, I instantly noticed that there was a really small window on the top floor facing SOHO, and the view was good there. However, the problem was that it was impossible to set up my tripod there without the window blocking part of my composition. After some struggling, I decided to shorten two legs of my tripod, put them outside the window hanging in the air. I used the middle part of those two legs and the third leg to stabilize the tripod. By doing this, I was able to put my camera outside. I took the shot holding my breath because I want to minimize the shakes. After a couple of trials, I finally got this image.

 

Done