Night time - downtown Twickenham

Our evening photoclass took time out of the class room the other week. Now that winter is on its way, it is dark by the time we get to class, an ideal opportunity to try out our tripods and long exposures with some night time photography in this case nearby Twickenham. I'm sure Twickenham has many attributes, but a vibrant night life is not up there amongst them - at least outside of match days at the rugby stadium - and there was no match on the day of our visit. Having said that we were not looking for reportage type photographs, and the object of the exercise was tripods/long exposure and not using flash.

 

I had been concerned about getting the correct colour balance, and set the camera to auto for this shoot, put the camera through its paces and set hoe it handled the conditions - street lights, traffic and moon; after all this was supposed to be a learning experience not a professional shoot nor a hunt for potential competition winners. Anyways - what ever about the subsequent pictures turned out to be, the initial shots of some street side (eg Heath Road, above) was acceptable. As you can see from the other pictures we ended up beside the river Thames for the remainder of the evening.  Even late in  the evening, the local airport Heathrow makes its presence felt - the long exposures used captures the aircraft coming into land as trails of light - as can be seen in the third and last pictures. And of course the long exposures mean that moving people (also the some of the local bird population, do they ever sleep ?) become blured.

Didn't capture any potential prize winners, or exhibition pictures, but then I wasn't expecting to. A useful exercise, one which I'd plan on doing again..