Lighting up the ol' Town Hall

Because it was buried in the business section of the online NZ Herald this week, I had missed this article on Telecom's show lighting up the Auckland Town Hall to promote their new mobile network. As luck would have it, two of my dear friends, Bill and Barbara Ellis attended the Birkenhead Historical Society AGM as I did yesterday, then said they were heading into the city to take pictures of the Town Hall lit up. Still in complete ignorance, I asked to tag along. Glad I did.

The light show was beautiful -- but, it being at night, and me with next to no night-time photo skills, I pretty well thought I was done in. The first thumbnail (click for a larger view for each one via Photobucket) is the result of trying to take a photo of the display with just normal flash/exposure time. Then, I started to tinker with the Fireworks setting. The initial results, while spectacular, were nothing really to write home about. Shots 2 - 4 below testify to that. I was about to give up, when Barbara suggested resting the camera against a lamp post. So, carefully avoiding the patches of human expectorate on the footpath near one of the poles, I gave it my best -- er -- shot. The rest were taken using this method (a tripod, though, would have been a neat thing to have had at the time). All in all, though -- I don't care that none of these are picture-perfect -- I had a lot of fun, and it was all as spontaneous as anything. As my mum used to tell me -- spontaneous fun is sometimes the best to have, no matter what happens.

First time I've experimented with thumbnails on Timespanner using my old Photobucket account as well. There might be more in the future.