Swing ride at Liseberg Amusement Park

Swing ride at Liseberg Amusement Park

Slänggungan or Wave Swinger is a fairground ride. I enjoyed the challenge of photographing a lot more than I would have done riding it. If you see one of these carousels and have a camera try a capture it. It’s tricky to get the sense of movement without making everything too blurred. Visiting friends in Gothenburg I wasn’t expecting to go to an amusement park. They had booked for us to go to a wonderful all you can eat restaurant which was awesome. After eating way to much we went for a walk around the park.

Grand Central Station, New York

Grand Central Station, New York

With such a crowded space I was amazed to see so many people moving at various spends and in all different directions. Some stood still, waiting around looking at their phones. Others were almost running through the crowds to catch their trains. It was amazing how people avoided bumping into each other. In an attempt to capture the movement I had the camera resting on a wall and was able to capture this photograph with a ten second long exposure time. The people moving (which was the majority of people) have turned into weird ghostly blurs which is exactly what I was after.

Back in 2006 I was in New York with my college friends and we went for a meal at TGI Fridays at Grand Central Station. Going around in a big group of students made it difficult for me to wonder off and get some photographs of the station. This is actually my second recent attempt at this super wide angle view of the Main Concourse. The previous day I had taken a photograph from the exact same spot but in the day time. Being inside the time of day didn’t really bother me. That was until I reviewed the shots on the laptop that evening. The large windows on the opposite side of the concourse had so much light coming through them that they were all white and this reflected off the floor and basically ruined the first set of photographs. I was fortunate that I had another few days in the city to return in the early evening and capture it properly.

Driving at Night

Driving at Night

About a year ago I set my camera up in the back seat on the tripod and drove around the city centre of Manchester. More recently I wanted to try it again with Mark helping me out. This was actually taken after spending about an hour driving around the city centre, then on the East Lancs road back towards Mark’s house. It was difficult to get the timings and flash right, but that is my face reflected in the mirror as I was driving at the time. Makes for a good Facebook cover photo.

Robin Hood’s Bay Experiment

Robin Hood's Bay Experiment

Walking back to the car after an afternoon exploring Robin Hood’s Bay and the beach I decided it was a scene that was worthy of an experiment with a new toy my friend John had given me. I had seen many pictures taken in the day with very blurry clouds like this and wondered how it was done. Turns out it is using a “big stopper” filter in front of the lens, that is a ten stop neutral density filter. Basically very dark sunglasses for your camera that cause the shutter speed to be very long (hence the cloud blur). However these filters are over £100 so I found a cheap “solution”. My friend John is a welder and welders wear helmets with dark glass to protect their eyes. John kindly gave me a small square of this glass to experiment with. It made my 1/250th of a second shutter speed into 30 seconds and is the equivalent of a 13 stop neutral density filter. That’s the good news. The bad news is it comes out of the camera looking green (see below), but with RAW image capture and some skills with Lightroom and Photoshop I was able to recover the above photograph. I must try this again in future!