Location

This is a shot I took a few months ago. It was the first day we'd had for ages in Lisboa with cloud in the sky, so I walked to the ferry station, caught the boat across the river, and did some shooting on the other side of the river.

The south bank always captures the late afternoon / early evening sun beautifully, and this is a location I've shot before (infact, one of my first submissions on dA was taken in almost exactly the same spot).

It's an incredibly place. The bank has this narrow footpath with old derelict houses and warehouses there. They are inhabited illegally by families who make a living from the river.
This house in particular has perhaps the best view of the city (just across the river) anywhere in Lisbon.
I've never understood how these houses haven't been bought by someone, or why no-one has invested in the area.

Technique

I wanted a long exposure to smooth the water out, so I decided to use the 10 stop Hoya ND400 (as there was a lot of light in the sky, the sun was still 45 minutes away from setting) and as there was so much reflected light coming off the water, I used a Hoya Pro1 polarizer to reduce the reflected glare.

I used the stone on the path to take my spot-meter reading, using this as a mid-tone. The shadows were within 4 stops of this, but the sky was around 7 stops brigher, so I used a 3 stop ND graduated filter (with a hard graduation) running along the top of the buildings to bring the sky back into exposure range.

With all these filters, the lens vignetted at 10mm. I wasn't too concerned because I intended to crop the shot into the square, so I shot it in portrait format, cropping the top and bottom and removing any vignetting.

I set my tripod up as close to the edge as I could, as I wanted to get the steps as integral to the composition as possible, but also wanted to get as much of the smooth tiling of the building's wall in shot.

After composing I added the polarizer, and rotated it until the refections were reduced, then I added the Hoya ND filter, and finally the Lee 3 stop ND grad.

Exposure was calculated by adding 13 stops (10 for the ND400, 2 for the polarizer and 1 extra because it's always better to get as much light in as possible without blowing hightlights) to the reading I'd taken from the stone.

I took an exposure and checked the histogram to make sure there were no blown highlights.
With shots that I intend to turn into black and white, I try to make sure there is as little lost shadow detail as possible, as it gives a lot more flexibility when doing the conversion...so in colour the shots can look half a stop over-exposed or so.

Post-Processing

Working with the RAW file in Apple Aperture, the shot was cropped first of all, and then converted to black and white.
I added a yellow filter, which has the effect of darkening blues and making the sky look quite inky.

Metadata

Taken in Cacilhas, Lisboa, Portugal
Nikon D80 | Sigma 10-20 | Nikon cable release
Hoya Pro 1 Polarizer | Hoya ND400 | Lee 0.9 (3 stop) hard ND gratuated filter
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
15 secs | f8 | 10mm | 5000k

Complete workflow in Apple Aperture