By 'Poplar' Demand...

...yes, yet another night-time long exposure...

The rain finally cleared and so it was back out by the Avon again and my favourite poplar trees, which I blipped quite a bit last winter.

However, I have learned much since, the joys of having done so many long exposures of late.

This scene is a difficult one, with a mixture of the beautifully natural, man-made modern bits and a huge range of tonal contrasts. This was a sod to process and took four versions, each getting slightly better, before I finally got to this.

The inky black impenetrable shadows, at the base in the river meant I could not see to even frame the camera and with the near full moon it is enough to test any RAW file – the three minute exposure has diffused the passing cloud nicely. In colour, it was an absolute dog’s dinner of horrible colour casts and light sources, from orange to pink to brown. Streetlamps, moonshine and reciprocity failure do not make a happy mix! The moon also cast a bright green flare spot. It all looked like some horrible disease! Mono was the only answer.

This last version had the black and white given a slight blue tint and extra contrast to the top and shadows opened a bit more at the base. A couple of swans were asleep, but have slowly drifted during the exposure. You can see them on LARGE - the moving stars, too.

I hope you like this – I might well even do normal (whatever that is!) blips for a few days, to recover from all this middle of the night malarkey! Unlike the majority, I haven't even blipped anything remotely Christmassy!