I went out tonight with Livvy for a change, shes been a bit of a daddys girl recently, so I asked her if she wanted to go out with me to find a photograph. She agreed straight away, and jumped up and down with excitement!
We got some warm clothes on, and headed off out. Livvy asked me what we were going to take a picture of, I told her I wasn’t sure, and that she needed to keep here eyes peeled for some cool stuff to take a photograph of. She agreed, and her only condition was we didn’t go into the dark woods, “no problem” I said, ” we wont go to the dark woods tonight”.
So we walked a little way down the street, looking at street lights, puddles, aeroplanes over head and all sorts of things that might make a photograph, but nothing was quite right. Eventually we came to a bridge, and with the weather taking a turn, and I could feel rain on the ever increasing wind, I thought it might be sensible to stop under the bridge and try for a photograph.
Again, it wasnt really working out for us, and Livvy made the call to go back home. She was concerned that one of her friends might go past and she’d feel embarased if one of her friends saw her with her dad taking photos of the road at night…….. For once, I was lost for an explanation, but I did do a little impression of a crab by the side of the road, just to prove to her that I wasn’t embarassing. It did the opposite of course, but it did make her laugh a giant belly laugh!!
So I took my little adventurer back home to get ready for bed, and went back out on my own in search of todays photograph. It was one of those evenings where nothing seemed quite right image wise, and the high light so far was definitely my crab dance!
I walked on, and headed up to a fly over where I thought I might get an image of the road beneath, and a long exposure. I find you need to get high up or low down to make a good long exposure of car head lights, so I thought the fly over might be a good shout.
By the time I got there, the wind was really blowing, and the rain was sideways. I absolutely hate getting my camera out in the rain! The wind meant I had to have my tripod low, and push down on it to keep it stable for a 20+ second exposure. It still effected the sharpness of the image, but given the conditions and the fact I was perched on thin sliver of curb on a busy roundabout, I felt it was best not to hang about too long trying to perfect the shot.
I captured the image you see here, and I packed up and headed back home.
Learnings – I’m kicking mydself for not using my polarising filter tonight, becasue in processing the image the glare of the road is a little over powering, and its taking away from the car light streaks. The rain is also dumbing down the contrast, and a polarising filter would have cut back on both issues, I think.
Inclement weather isn’t something I’ve really struggled with before, save for not wanting to get my camera wet which a brolly solves. But this time, I think the precarious location, wind and sideways rain just threw me off my game to much. Some valuable lessons there in forcing the issue, and taking a little more time to correctly capture the scene.
C- must do better………
Onegav 