Colour Overload - RHS Wisley Glow 2020

 We got to visit the Wisley Glow event this year (just at the end of lockdown), and having been to a few others in the last few years, this was no disappointment.  None of the tacky Santa and Reindeer stuff that was a huge part of Kew one year, but plenty of changing light patterns, repetitive music etc.  Quite crowded, with many small children, a one-way system and ropes everywhere, so a healthy dose of patience required........I am not selling it to you am I?!?  It was a welcome distraction from the never ending lockdown though.

It's been a very quiet year for Catchlight 35, not surprisingly with the pandemic, and quite hard in all sorts of other ways too that no-one had expected for many people.

So dust off that camera, out with the tripod, turn down the ISO and use remote trigger for varying long exposures.  After that, shoot to stack and lose the people!  I think the minimum exposure time for any of my shots was 6 seconds, but mostly they were 13 to 30 seconds or more.  You need a relatively windless day so I was lucky.  Enjoy.

This is lit with my own torch for the statue in the foreground - most people may have missed this since it was pitch black just here.

This is a stack of around 8 shots, for different lights on the trees/balls and needing different exposures depending on the colour of the lights.  It is beautiful just to stand there and watch the colours change, but you only get the full impact in a photo with a stack.

I have only put a few here, but you get the idea.  Then there are the ones you took by mistake when moving the camera.......

OOPS!  Very abstract.......!

This is what happens when its dark and you either press the shutter by mistake or you touch the touchscreen on the camera (more likely, having forgotten to switch off touch ability) whilst picking up the tripod to move on.

Tips:

As I've said before in an earlier blog, the dark is your enemy when trying not to lose any bits of kit so have a load of big pockets to drop lens caps/hoods/batteries etc into.  Hopefully you'll find everything at the end. 

Avoid tripping up small children, or them tripping you up...

AND KEEP WARM!

P.S  Then there's the overlay experiment....double exposure.  Hmm......