Great Yarmouth at Night

I'd only ever been through Great Yarmouth on a boat, heading between the Northern and Southern Broads, so it was a novel experience to walk along the promenade after dark.

The sea-front was cold and windswept; and, apart from a handful of tripod wielding photographers, it was pretty well deserted.  Looking at the advertisements for past and future "attractions" (the likes of Roy "Chubby" Brown, Jim Davidson, Cannon & Ball and The Chuckle Brothers) told me everything I needed to know about Yarmouth's standing in the celebrity stakes...

The area in front of the Britannia Pier had obviously been recently renovated, and - when I first saw it - was bathed in a rather beautiful violet light.  I quickly set my tripod up, but by the time I'd done so the light had turned orange.  It took me a little while to twig that the vertical lamp-post objects were rather like latter-day lava lamps, and were changing colour on a regular basis.  Given the length of the exposures that night (10s to 30s) there was absolutely no chance of capturing just a single hue.  Luckily, good old Silver Efex Pro came to the rescue!

The final two pictures are of the same scene: the first was shot in colour and then converted to monochrome; the second is Infra Red, with the colour "corrected" as best I can.  Flare was a huge problem with the IR camera, so if I try this again I'll probably end up using a prime lens rather than a zoom.