Night Crawling in Bristol

      A few weeks ago I took an online course in Low Light photography on Lynda.com. I had been meaning to go out in the dark for some time but I am not really one for wandering around alone at night especially hauling a rather large expensive camera! Last night I went to visit a friend who lives down in Stokes Croft in Bristol. On my way out I took some photos of the plants and shrubbery around my house. 
       These first images were super super dark and blurry, I had to push my ISO right up to 6400 to get anything while my camera was handheld. Also the white balance on Auto was terrible. In hindsight I should have had a fiddle with this when taking the images but was kind of embarrassed skulking around our estate in the dark so I didn't take many pictures. The joys of working in RAW meant I could push the white balance completely in another direction without damaging the image too much and it was crazy what came out of some very super orange images. 

       Here are a couple of the final images, they were quite soft in the end and pretty grainy I think next time I will use a tripod and longer exposure. 

       I then drove over to my friends house, this area of Bristol is known for graffiti and there is some pretty amazing artwork around. I didn't venture far but I got a few interesting images. These mostly just needed brightening up, I had less issues with the white balance so I just had to push the contrast a bit to bring out the details in the graffiti. 

       I would like to do this more but I think I might get a friend to come with so I don't feel so worried about wandering about in the dark! There are some pretty interesting streets in Bristol which would make for some great photos.