La Peniche at dusk

Elaine and Derek’s wedding at the registry office last Friday was followed-up with a drinks reception at the Burlington Hotel before all the guests headed to dinner at La Peniche, which is a restaurant on a barge which cruises up the Grand Canal as diners eat on board.  It’s a lovely and unique venue for such an occasion, and while I wasn’t attending the dinner I did head over there after I had left the Burlington to take a couple of photographs for the wedding album.

It was about 4.45pm when I arrived at the barge, which at this time of year meant it was dusk, and the sky was a lovely deep blue.   The barge is nicely lit inside, and I’ll be posting the interior shot I took tomorrow, but it is also nicely lit outside and so before I entered I took this photograph.

Light levels were very low, so my ISO was up at 1600 and the aperture wide open at f/2.8.  This just got me a hand-holdable shutter speed.  I would have rathered an aperture of perhaps f/8 to keep more of the scene sharp, but there just wasn’t enough light to go there, and I didn’t want to go setting up artificial light sources to light the barge.

The office blocks in the background of the shot aren’t the most aesthetic, but at this time of the evening, with many of their windows lit up, they created a nice backdrop to my shot.

The colour of the sky, and the colour temperature of the office block behind contrasts nicely with the warm tones of the lights wrapped around the trees to mark the boarding point for the barge.

I particularly like the spot lights on the path and how the bench is lit in this shot, which was really a grab shot, but one that seems to have been captured at just the ideal time of day.