St Cuthbert's

Nikon D70 @ 18mm, 5 secs, f/3.5, ISO 200

Previous · Current · Next

The invincibility afforded by having a camera hanging round your neck can lead you to some dodgy places!

This is another shot I took a couple of nights ago when the fog was pretty heavy. I passed by St Cuthbert's church and thought there might be some interesting scenes inside the grounds. It was late at night, dimly lit with poor visibility and I was all on my lonesome. Certainly not the kind of place you want to go to unnecessarily. But I had a camera in my hand so it seemed like a great idea!

I spent about half an hour there. At first I was going at quite a leisurely pace, making sure my exposures and compositions were spot on. But as it started to dawn on me that it probably wasn't the best place for someone with a lot of expensive equipment to be, I started to take my shots a lot faster, almost running between locations! At the point of taking this shot I notice a group of guys that were walking past stop to see what I was doing. Hmm…

TAXI!!!

Of course I took my shot first, but that was the end of my late night graveyard shoot! Best not to hang about to see what the guys were up to, I thought.

When I came to look at this shot on my computer I wondered if blending two exposures would have helped bring out more detail in the foreground. But then I realised that it was the dark and foreboding foreground, contrasted with the unusual ominous glow from the sky and building, that made me like the image in the first place.

So what do you think? Too dark and not enough detail, or just right to convey the eerie atmosphere?