Cambridge at Night

I'm embarrassed to see that it's over a month since my last post, but life has been very busy during January.  I've had no time to process any pictures; in fact, I've had precious little time to take any pictures either!  One exception was a Camera Club expedition into Cambridge to do some night photography.  I've done very little full-night photography before, and wasn't completely sure how to process the images for best effect.  The result is surreal, no matter how it's done, so I decided to use HDR Efex Pro to try and squeeze as much tonal range as I could from the shots.  A couple are three shot HDRs (-2, 0, +2 stops), but the majority are images processed from a single RAW file.  Anyway, make up your own minds as to whether you think the processing was successful...

First port of call was the area around the Mill island and the Garden House hotel.

We then wandered to King's Parade.  Well, you have to, don't you?

We then headed off to Garret Hostel Lane bridge, which has great views of the river in both directions.  The only problem with 30s exposures was that cars kept coming and going over Trinity bridge at random intervals.  My favourite subject of the evening was the Jerwood library in Trinity Hall.  These two shots were true HDR, as the contrast range would otherwise have been totally unmanageable.

 The final two shots are of Clare and King's, taken from The Backs.

The evening finished with a well-earned hot chocolate at the Graduate Centre, with the inevitable accompaniment of club members drooling over each other's equipment (photographic, of course).