Almhouses, at Night

Realised I'd not yet tried the 10-24mm Nikon lens at night, with a time exposure.

This row of Victorian Almhouses (for poor (women) widows) is often a subject for passing tourists and I too, have cast a wandering lens over the entrance here. So far, a good a picture has evaded me - a real wideangle is needed to 'get it all in' and in poor weather it looks plain drab and in nice sunny weather, when the immaculate gardens are in bloom, the old ladies are sitting outside - and I'm too polite (& live too near!) to impose...

So, just after midnight, on a hopefully drunkard free Sunday, well it was bloody cold with a freezing wind whipping up around one's whats-its..., so just three 30 sec time exposures.

Despite lenshood, a clean shiny new lens and Nikon's multicoating, there was flare and halation around every light source, bounced from that really bright lamp at the top. I now remember why I hadn't taken a decent picture before. The flare spots had turned green, echoed by muddy browns of the sky - and a sickly ochre-yellow building. Seeing this on the camera screen made me stop the lens down more, to (hopefully) tighten up this mess and making the flare-spots smaller.

Turning black and white in editing and it was almost worse! It looked like rain spots on the lens, all over the sky area - and from then, I basically re-built the sky, using the cloning tools and have removed all of the flare spots. I still wanted to give an impression of bright light so didn't want to completely eradicate a sense of light-spill.

Normally I'm quite happy to edit with the TV or music going on but I got to concentrate so much, I spent 20 mins in total silence, to concentrate!

Whilst 'sensible' people (who are these strange beasts??) would have given up, this became a labour of love and I knew I'd get there in the end. I probably wasn't going to get a better shot of this, and taking the trouble to set up the tripod in the road etc and would have to go out again at some point, in the freezing weather, to get a blip, anyway.

No, it's still far from perfect but, I would say, presentable. And, as if to justify such madness, I do say that it's good to practice one's Photoshop skills!

Just had an email from the curator of the Gallery, after I'd sent him Saturday's Blip. He replied Tim that a fantastic photo! Well done you, I am so pleased with it. Thank you so much. Which is always lovely to hear! And from someone who's business is dealing with quality images, day in, day out.