Funny story, I went out tonight at about 9pm this evening to take my photograph, and I had a simple plan to take an image of something urban at night. There is a shopping city not too far from where we live, the perfect place I thought, but I’d need somewhere fairly close to park as time was ticking on.
I found a roundabout with a foot bridge going over it, so I turned down a nearby side street, parked up and went back on foot to take a look.
The bridge itself looked cool, lit by street lights either side, but I could get low down so as to exclude them from the shot, and so only capturing the reflected light on the bridge sides; I kept one street light in the shot in the background to draw you into the image. Its the photograph you see above.
I felt I had the shot I wanted in the bag, however I thought I’d try for a few more, just incase. So I tried a few shots from over the side of the bridge, again using the passing cars headlights to bring interest to the night time scene in a long exposure.
During capturing one of these shots three youths appeared at the far end of the bridge. Brilliant I thought, I’ve just set my camera on a 30 second exposure and now three your rebels are going to give me some grief about taking photos at night from a bridge. Maybe they’ll even push my camera off the edge for a laugh, I thought, disasterising the whole event in my mind!
I gripped the base of my tripod, just in case, but I didn’t move it at all because I wanted to finish the shot.
They came nearer.
Just as the shutter closed and the shot completed, I picked my camera and tripod up and turned towards the three oncoming shadowy figures; who were by now only a few feet away from me. Close enough in fact, to see that they were three boy scouts clearly having just finished a scout meet up. I saw a few other crossing the road too down below me.
I gave a little laugh at myself, packed my gear up and headed home.
The mind trully is a wonderful thing, at times!
Learnings – things are not always what they seem, especially when it comes to human beings and the human mind!
Onegav 