E-Luminate

A few shots from last week's E-Luminate festival in Cambridge.  I wasn't that impressed by the festival this year.  Few buildings were lit, and the lighting schemes weren't very imaginative, mainly relying on projections.

 

York At Night

One of the reasons I love night photography, is the way a scene changes utterly after dark.  Even the most ordinary building can come alive with good lighting.  Lighting schemes can vary greatly from place to place.  In York, many of the streets in the centre of town had strings of bulbs running their entire length.  It was as if they had left their Christmas decorations up.  Disappointingly, the Minster lacked external lighting.  Whereas several of the gates on the city wall were lit by nets of small blue-white lights.  The historic Shambles was particularly atmospheric at night, showing how it was, apparently, the inspiration for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter books (as evidenced by the fact that the street boasts not one, not two, but three Harry Potter shops).

 

 

York

I recently had a couple of unexpected free days.  So I made a last minute Travelodge booking and headed to York.  I was there for three days.  The first and third days were very dull and grey, but the middle day had blue skies and lovely warm light throughout.  York isn't a place I knew.  My only other visit had been for a conference and I saw little more than the hotel.  So whilst the grey days offered nothing photographically, did enjoy exploring.

The Rising Tide At Ilfracombe

Okay, now this post is just very late, and I offer no excuse.  Over New Year, Vic and I were looking for ideas of what we could shoot on another grey day.  A little research on 500px showed that part of the harbour in Ilfracombe gets covered as the tide comes in.  It offered some interesting shapes for long exposures images.  Again, the tide times worked well for us and we were able to shoot from the first wave touching the top of the wall, until it was completely submerged.