It seems like here in Manchester the only type of photography I can be happy with in winter is night photography. The above image was captured last night on the corner of Portland Street looking down York Street on the edge of the cities China Town district. Mark and I had actually stopped to take some photos of the Britannia Hotel on the other side of Portland Street. Just as we were about to move on I looked down this side street and saw the neon sign for the Vina karaoke Bar and the ornate colour lights zig zagging down the street and felt like I could make a photo out of this view.
When I had set up the tripod and got my settings right on the camera I took a test picture and thought there was too much dark, boring and unlit areas in the middle and bottom of the frame. So I took another exposure of 20 seconds at f/20. Not having a cable release I used the cameras self-timer mode (set to 2 seconds) to reduce any camera shake by pressing the shutter to take the picture. What I didn’t see was the double decker bus turning right into this street, once the timer was up the shutter opened just as the bus was in front of the camera. Then a taxi and smaller bus followed across my photo. This was the result and I love taking photographs like this, it is one of the few types of photo that the human eye can’t see but the camera can record. I would love to produce a series of these light trail night pictures around the city.