Night Light

It's late Thursday night or early Friday morning — take your pick — and I promise that this will be the last photo that I publish today.

I have been thinking for a few nights that I would like to take a night photo from the window, so I just now gave it a whirl. In a place of deep night darkness, with no street lights anywhere and no other houses to emanate light, the previous occupants of the house had the wisdom to have a streetlight installed just outside the house. The electric company charges a hundred bucks per year to keep the light on, which seems like a great deal indeed. Although it's a genuine street light, it's nowhere close to the street. In fact, it would be nigh onto useless if not actually dangerous out there on the road. The shock of suddenly driving under a street light would probably cause people to drive off the road in bewilderment. Here, near the house, it provides some measure of security in the bleak nights, and it also sheds an extremely pleasant ambience.

For the photographers among you, here is the data: ISO 100; shutter speed 2 sec; aperture 8; focal length 51mm. I applied a cooling filter in Photoshop to bring the colour of the light back into line (it was very yellowy/orangey), and then I desaturated somewhat. I was positioned more than a metre away from the window, so there is a little bit of glare but not much. I did a little bit of cropping because there was some wall in the photo due to my distance from the window.

I am not well-versed in night photography, but I am not displeased by the results, and I am very pleased that I didn't have to stand out in the cold in order to take the picture.