12 Steps

The first one is Honesty, which for many is the hardest.

These 12 steps lead to the upper floor of the Aotea Centre, where the Writers' Festival is on tonight. 

We met up with friends for an early dinner before heading to the Festival for a homage to Stephen Sondheim. Not really my cup of tea (but I'll be back on the weekend for a David Shields workshop).

Tonight I am playing chauffeur. And while waiting for milady, I take the opportunity to take some night photos in the city.

I used to do a lot of that back in the day; shooting Kodak Tri-X and pushing it 2 stops. You never knew what you had until you got into the darkroom, and sometimes the negs were too thin to do much with. But it was great fun when it worked.

Now, shooting digital, you get instant feedback. And if I'm honest I'll need to do a bit more of this before I can be happy with the results when shooting handheld at night. My fear is that upping the ISO to say 1200 or 1600 will introduce too much noise, but that's probably an experiment worth trying.