Lumiere Impressions

By Paul Clarke Photography

January 19^th, 2018

Tripods. Tripods everywhere. That was the first thing I noticed. I wanted to grab a bit of Lumiere London while it was in town, but so did everyone else. Can't blame them. I didn't bother with a tripod, but instead had a play with textures and styles I wouldn't normally go for. Felt great to experiment a bit.

Much of it done with the tiny, beautiful Primoplan 58mm 1.9. A bugger to use in the dark though, with manual everything. Amazing bokeh though. (That's the fancy word for the quality of the blurriness of the out-of-focus bits.) Two other lenses helped me to see in the dark: the rather more forgiving Sigma Art 24mm 1.4, and the mighty Canon 200mm 2.0.

The highlight had to be the Granary Square undulations - waves of light rolling towards each other, right down at the purple end of the spectrum, rolling and soothing and rolling you again. My younger self would have rolled up a fat one and stayed for hours, I suspect.

I'm always drawn to the people though, wherever I am. Whether shuffling in bewilderment through the fog, detached and on their phones, or marching in layered herds through the glow - always the people. It was great to bend some rules of composition and focus, and just wallow in impressionism.