“Grafton Street’s a wonder…”

I discovered last night that if you stand on Grafton Street with a tripod and a camera all sorts of people will come up to talk to you.  From teenagers wanting me to take their picture, to people asking if I could help them operate their point and shoot cameras, to a homeless guy with views on the difference between Nikon and Canon cameras, I met them all last night.  And I managed to take one or two photos of the newly-illuminated christmas lights too.

There was a definite lift in the spirits on Grafton Street last night – maybe it was the excitement amongst a certain section of the population that Westlife were on the street to launch their new perfume in BTs, but I think it was more likely to do with the sense of christmas approaching that the turning on of the christmas lights brought.  They’re quite nice christmas lights too, and having not gotten a chance to photograph them last year, and with a couple of hours to kill before the camera club meeting last night, I was organized enough to have my camera and tripod with me when I was leaving the office last night.

Within a couple of minutes of finding my spot and setting up my tripod for some low-light exposures the first gaggle of teenagers approached to ask me to take their photo, but when they asked what paper I was from and I told them I wasn’t they quickly lost interest.  Good thing too – I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea myself.  There would be others follow later and go through much the same routine. I guess they had seen some press guys down at BTs and were looking for their 15 minutes of fame in the Evening Herald or something.

Next up was a couple who were trying, and failing, to take a nice shot of each other with the christmas lights in the background.  It went something like this.  “Ok, smile!”  Click. Flash. “Awww, they came out all dark”.  And so they tried again. Click. Flash.  Still all dark.  At this point they saw me with my tripod, which is obviously the universal sign for “he who knows stuff about cameras”, and asked what they might be doing wrong.  “Turn off the flash” I suggested, and then taking a look at the camera noticed that it had a night/party scene mode, so I switched it to that, they took a photo where the flash still fired but the camera did a slow exposure to bring up the background (which, after all, was not getting any significant light from the small flash, and hence was dark in previous shots) and they went away happy.  I just realised I forgot to tell them to switch the camera back to Auto, so no doubt all their christmas photos are going to be a bit blurry and they won’t know why. Oops!

There followed two more people asking me camera related questions, including “what difference does the colour of the background make?”.  When he showed me the menu item where he could choose a background colour, I realised it was just for the menu, and not for the photos, so I told him not to worry about it as it wouldn’t impact on the shots, just on how nice the camera menu looked.

Finally the homeless guy approached and he was both friendly and knowledgeable.  His opener: “Is that a Canon?”.  No, I replied, it’s a Nikon.  After a little discussion on how nice the lights were, but how it was a shame that they put them on in November when it used be December, and having agreed with him that it was all down to greed to get us to spend more in their shops, he brought the conversation back to my camera. “Is it digital?”.  It is, I replied.  “Sure they’re all the same now, them digital cameras – it probably doesn’t matter whether you get a Nikon or Canon these days”.  And after a quick look at the last shot I had taken, he was gone.

In the midst of all that I did get to take some shots.  This one above I quite like because while the shutter speed was slow enough to require a tripod and to blur some of the movement, it was also fast enough to get the group of three in the foreground relatively sharp as they stood still.  I’m undecided as to whether I prefer the monochrome version or a colour version.  The monochrome shot is punchy, to use a phrase that comes up in the camera club regularly, but I wonder does the scene benefit from the vibrancy that the colour brings.

I was going to do a fancy rollover type thing where you’d see the colour shot by putting your mouse over the image, but in the interest of accessibility, let’s just go the old fashioned route, and if you want to see a larger version of the colour shot click on the thumbnail to the right.  If you have a preference, I’d be interested to hear it.