This is a more complete view of the Albatross sculpture, showing the small enclosed harbour area behind the Wellington Rowing club and boat shed on the left. I like how still the water is in this beautiful evening light. The colourful lights behind the sculpture and to the right are installations as part of the annual LUX festival. The sculpture has been here since 1986 and I’m fortunate in capturing this as I didn’t want the sculpture’s own lights distracting from the LUX and city lights behind. There is actually flood lights underneath that make it glow yellow most nights but I didn’t want that colour tint.
Secondly, I was lucky as there are times when both the light and water aren’t on. Here I got the timing right and the fountain was on without the lights, just what I wanted. The sculpture is by artist Tanya Ashken and is one of her best known works. I found a great comment about this work of art from Francis Sutton “it’s curves evoke the flight of an albatross while the right angles remind viewers of the city nearby, the water falls intermittently and it falls softening the solid forms”. The shutter speed on this capture was 2.5 seconds to give the water that soft ghostly quality.