With the WX Exhibition theme being light and nature, for my images I wanted to focus on light trails. Ebby and I worked together in this shoot, finding locations, experimenting with camera settings, and sharing techniques. We checked what time the sun would have set completely and planned out shoot around that as we needed dark conditions. At around 6pm, we explored the first location - a bridge over a busy road. We brought tripods as we would need a very slow shutter speed and set them up on the bridge. At first, I began with a shutter speed of 15 seconds, ISO 100, and aperture f/9 to combat the extra light being let into the camera. These settings worked well regarding exposure however, I wanted to capture more extensive light trails and have them be even brighter, therefore I lowered my shutter speed to the lowest my camera would allow - 30 seconds, which worked perfectly. 

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For the first few shots, I wanted classic still images. I then went on to experiment with moving the camera around during exposure, experimenting with things like zoom bursts and intentional camera movements from shaking it to moving side to side. These gave me more unique and interesting results as I was able to almost paint with the lights. 

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We then moved onto a second location - another bridge but looking down on a roundabout as we thought the circular effect would be interesting. Again, I experimented with tripod images and more dynamic movement, both working well. For some images, I zoomed in slightly every 5 seconds during the exposure which gave me a cool effect of seeing multiple scenes in one. 

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I then uploaded the images to lightroom to edit. I only took around 40 images as each one took 30 seconds to expose. With editing, I wanted to enhance the light trails, their colour and exposure, while also creating an atmosphere in each image. I focused on levels and colour grading for this and I am pleased with the results. I also cropped multiple images to decontextualise the lights and create a more abstract finish. 

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I am happy with how this shoot went and the results in which I achieved. I think they work well under the light factor of the exhibition theme and have their own link to nature with being taken outside and a lot of images can be seen framed by the trees. If I were to do this shoot again or create additional images for the exhibition, I would experiment with a bigger variety of locations and also better tie in the nature aspect.