I'm not sure that the photos I made that night with Paul's company are that breathtaking but it was just great to be out in such a nice area, so nicely lit and populated by such nice people. It would've been nice to just sit down by the pond but to be chatting while the long exposures were being made just fit my description of a perfect evening.
I have seen some really nice work by a fellow local photographer in this area. I communicated with him a bit and determined that they do not close the gates at the Boffins Club at night. Maybe they do later on, but they were still open would we left there after 9 PM.
Seeing his work made me decide I needed to get there before the end of the nice weather but I needed to arrive with an idea. An idea that I hadn't already seen him capably execute. If you are on Instagram I highly recommend following him. His handle is @thecinnamon. Some great work with some aerial photography thanks to his quadcopter and a clear creative and technical understanding of what he's doing.
Of course my idea involves defaulting to what I'm good at, off-camera flash. It took a little bit of tweaking but I managed to get a few shots with the Koi in the photo, illuminated by the flash I had aimed at the water. I even forgot to bring the bread crumbs I was going to to lure them into the right spot. I think enough people have fed them this year that when they see humans they come looking and expecting treats. It sure was interesting to watch them shoot away every time that flash fired. That's one of the reasons you will see the streaks in the water from the leaves that were moving the entire time of the 20+ second exposure, while the slow-moving fish were not to be seen as streaks because they took off so very quickly.
The last shot was just simply taking five minutes to move the tripod 10 feet one direction (Paul and I were pondering our jealousy of how quickly an able-bodied person could have picked that tripod up, rotated 90°, and set it down where they wanted it while it took us five minutes) to make a photo he thought looked like something out of Hansel and Gretel.
I must say that I've been enjoying doing some more scenic type photography. In my mind I feel optimistic about trying to do more of this in the winter but we will see what happens. There may be a few more less inspiring shots made out of the window of my van where it's a little bit warmer, unless getting around is easy and I'm feeling motivated.
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