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Sign at night #1

Footpath sign at night, Moel Famau, North Wales

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The story behind this image

What to do when the days are short and the nights are long and cold? Give up photography and stay warm indoors? Not on your nelly!

For me, winter is a wonderful time of opportunity to get photographs that would be very difficult in summer, unless you're prepared to stay up into the wee small hours that is.

This photo, taken on the slopes of my local hill Moel Famau in North Wales, was shot at the very acceptable time of 6.25am on one of my pre-work morning walks at the end of November.

One of the aspects of night photography that I really like is the wonderful colour palette that you can get from a combination of very warm artificial lights, and the very cold blue natural light of the night sky. This is what happened here, although I didn't see it at the time as my eye/brain combination had done a very clever auto white balance adjustment for me. It was only when I reviewed the image from the camera later that I saw the colours in all their glory.

I'm looking forward to this winter now, to see what else I can photograph under these amazing conditions.

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Image data


Filename - sign night 01.jpg

Camera - Canon 5D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm

Exposure - 30secs @ f5.6, ISO400

Location - Moel Famau, North Wales

This image - 800x533px JPEG

Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2

Comments - Sign lit by LED torch.