Back to the drawing board.

Being more into portraits, I find landscapes much more challenging. Not meaning that as a good thing, more of an inditement on my inability to do it well.

The challenge I posed myself was to capture a landscape in pitch darkness. Well after the midnight hour, I found a place that certainly achieved that, and having forgotten to bring my torch, setting up was certainly a challenge. With a black bag to boot, there were at least 3 occassions when I lost track of where I had put it down! I had to resort to activating my phone to shed some light!

Getting to this spot was an adventure in itself as I walked out of the light into the darkness, and every now and then prayed the rustling behind me was some small animal that would most likely be more scared of me than I of it! I had already had to walk past a group of hooded teenagers 'hanging' under a small walkway that led to the dead-end that was Teddington Wier (early hours of the morning. Why?). As I passed them, it occured to me that it may not have been as wise an idea as I had thought it was a good one. I was worried that they may have put 2 and 2 together and figured there was some value in that backpack! They didn't follow although it had also occurred to me that the rustling I had heard may not have been an animal! It was an uncomfortable 30 minutes, but they had left when I made my return. On the drive home, in my head I composed the news article about the body of local man found in Teddington Lock. What was he doing there? I doubted any reader would conclude I was there for an illicit meeting with the night sky.

Focusing in the pitch black was the biggest challenge, particularly with my eyesight. There was precious little light to focus on and I did try and get a double exposure at one point when a boat vetured into the lock from a distance. Didn't seem to work and the moment passed. This shot is the only one I felt I could use of the masses I took. It was disappointing to say the least. I have seen so many night shots with amazing detail that it just left me numb that my knowledge of light and how to entice it into my lens was so lacking. I had tried many options and felt from the LCD that maybe one or two had worked OK. But no, combination of way too much noise and poor focus combined to give a very poor result. Having said that, it was very dark, very overcast with only the glow of the Metropolis creeping through the cloud blanket and some light thrown from the car park of a building on the other side of the river providing some reference points, but none reaching the wier itself.

So, it's back to the drawing board, more reading, more understanding required.

PS - I have just noticed that exif data shows this shot to be 1/10", which of course is complete nonesense? Not sure what that's about? It was of course more like 25"