Charing Cross and M8 Motorway, a photo from Glasgow, Scotland

Photographer's Note

This was taken from a footbridge over Charing Cross a busy road junction by the entrance to the M8 motorway in Glasgow. I'm not sure what this shows about Scotland beyond the fact we have traffic here too but well I thought it would make a change from the usual piccies of quaint highland glens and castles. The building that is lit-up in the foreground is St Georges Mansions a good example of a 19th century Glasgow tenement block (its also featured in another photo I've posted a while back taken from the same location).

I used a long exposure to capture the traffic trails and used Fuji Provia 100F slide film because it doesn't suffer from reciprocity failure with longer exposures. I experimented with using a neutral density filter so I could use even longer exposures but this caused a lot of problems as the extra layer of glass just lead to increased problems of flare from the street lights....

Nottinghill, ydarias has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

torben (3100) 2004-03-09 15:53

You get a dark green one from me just on the principle of showing the _real_ stuff. Trekking the earth one hopefully sees other stuff than the tourist clichées.
I once before ranted about how much I dislike artificial illumination of buildings in general, but that earned me several "not useful" ratings, so I won't do that here;-) But St Georges Manisons really looks butt-ugly in that sick poison-yellow light from below.
Here the illumination actually suits the overall mood of this shot, how can anyone stand to live at a motoway crossing like this?
The lines of the carlights are well placed in the frame and along with the stars of the street lights and the depressing color of the sky makes this a good photo.

Josh69 (1437) 2004-03-09 19:32

Nice photo. I agree with the 1st comment about the building looking a bit strange in the yellow light. I wonder if it would be worth trying to desaturate the yellow channel in Photoshop.

Anyway, you have obviously thought about this photo before you took it, and the results are excellent.

ydarias (679) 2005-03-10 5:11

Hello Matt. I like very much your photo, it seems a postal photo. This type of photos are very complicated because the long exposition can overexpose some parts, but your photo is "perfect". Congratulations.