Night Shoot in Poole: Good Friday 2012

Karen and I met at the Asda car park at the appointed time of 6:30, to find outselves well outnumbered with around a dozen other tripod-wielding snappers all looking for Brian! The others were from other clubs, including Blandford, Pimperne and Weymouth so it turned out to be quite a good social evening as well!  Unfortunately it was overcast with no sunset opportunity so we immediately retired to a pub for coffees to make a plan of action.

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We made our way to the quay where our various groups of tripods entertained the locals – much easier for us in a biggish group so no one bothered us!  After an hour or so, which passes pretty quickly when you are trying to become familiar with your camera mounted high up on a tripod and trying to use live view while not being able to see buttons or dials, we migrated towards the new Twin Sails bridge.  It appears the bridge was not working that night, at least according to the published schedule of lifts.  The bridge has been beset with problems since being formally opened by various dignatories and royalty and had only been carrying road traffic for a few days – did they have yet more problems?  Earlier in the evening, they had all the red traffic lights flashing away while traffic continued to happily drive over it.  Even so, there were various photo opportunities with the bridge down and well lit by the road lighting (plus the moon): the road lighting was rather too bright for photographic purposes  and the locals are already complaining about the brightness.

All in all, a useful exercise as I later found out I should have used a lens hood against lens flare from powerful street lights and to tighten the tripod head more! And many thanks to Brian T for leading us all.  My pics here aren’t intended to win any prizes: just an exercise in grappling with Lightroom for the first time which has wonderful adjustment tools but a horrible tendancy to force me to change my favoured way of working.