light Archives - Just 10 Photos

Weston Hospicecare is one of the Just 10 Photos supported charities that you’re invited to donate to if you enjoy our photographs.

Based in Weston-super-Mare the hospice provides physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual care to the 1 in 100 local people with life-limiting illnesses such as cancer, motor neurone disease and heart or lung failure. The Hospice’s care reaches out to local people in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset and border areas of Somerset providing a safe haven and source of comfort and guidance to every single person who needs it.

Light Up a Life is just one of the many events the hospice runs each year to gain donations and provide comfort to those who’ve lost someone. Run at the hospice, just before Christmas, Light Up a Life comes at a hard time of year for many. The hospice garden is filled with hundreds of lanterns lit to celebrate a life.

When I heard about the Festival of Light event at Longleat I knew I had to go and get some photographs for the blog. In terms of night time light events I’ve experienced it’s second only to the ‘fire garden’ event at Stonehenge as part of cultural celebrations of the London 2012 Olympics.

The Festival of Light is the first cultural event of its kind in Europe and consists of twenty hand-crafted displays built and placed by a team of over one hundred from the Sichuan province in China.

The scale of the works, dotted around Longleat House, is simply amazing. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people on the evening I went and as you’ll see below there was lots of space to get photographs.

Because of the dark conditions and high contrasting lights I took my trusty Olympus OMD E-M1 and 25mm f1.8 lens (a great combination for low light and sharp photographs) and one leg of my Three Legged Thing tripod called Brian as a monopod. Someone walked past and commented that it was the biggest selfie stick they’d ever seen… sometimes I despair! Most of the photos were taken in aperture priority mode and using the monopod to reduce any camera shake.

I really hope Longleat do something similar next winter, I’d love to spend more time wandering around getting even more photos.