Framedlight

At the end of July I attended a photo workshop based at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in the St Paul's area of the city. I had not been to St Paul's for years and I was struck by how trendy it has become, it must be one of the most interesting areas of the city. The workshop was run by Paul Hill and Maria Falconer who are excellent teachers and had obviously put a lot of thought and planning into the day. There were around 10 of us and we did some classroom sessions and some practical sessions. We took our computers and shared a few of the pictures we had taken at then end of the day. The three sessions were based around 'light', 'frame', and 'vantage point'. Paul and Maria in the classroom got us to think about each of these topics, illustrating them with photographs of their own and others, thinking about things like 'what type of light we were looking at, was it direct sunlight, reflections, shadows etc. and looking to photograph

We were dropped off by Terry at Tate Modern. The time was now a bit before 1.00am and we were told by Doug that the lights illuminating St Paul's would be switched off at 1.50am. I started photographing around the entrance of the Tate and then started to walk towards the Millenium Bridge, finally crossing it and arriving on the other side just as the light went out. I managed the classic shot from the ramp at the Tate end of the bridge looking across to St Pauls, and then a less classic shot of a curve in the bridge. The blue colour of the bridge at night was electric and looked wonderful against the velvet black sky. I managed to process all the shots just in Lightroom except for some minor cloning out of a sign in one. It is amazing how Lightroom can cope with these extremes of contrast, especially in long exposures, although the wide dynamic range of the D800 must help as well. Terry picked us up in front of St Pauls and whisked us off to a cafe in Smithfield where I had tomato