BB pal Scott Matthews took this magnificent photo of New York City during the last sunrise of 2013. The view is looking east from Morningside Heights, across Harlem and Central Park, toward the smokestacks at Queens’ Astoria Generation Station. Click to see it larger. Scott says:
(I used) “manual focus” (rather than auto-focus) and “fast prime lenses.” Manual focus, because how can a camera know what YOU want to focus on? And fast prime lenses for the ability to shoot with narrow depth-of-field, which can help to isolate a subject (that blurry background/foreground look). So, for example, with the smokestacks I manually focused on the rising smoke and used a fairly wide aperture to help isolate them (landscape photos are most commonly shot with a narrow aperture for a deep depth-of-field).