Shapes and Shadows...

A complete, bipolar change to yesterday's super colourful Christmas light reflection Blip - that held the top Spotlight slot for a good while, many thanks to ALL for that - I had spotted and snapped this building when snooping around at night for my Slums of Salisbury Blip, back in November.

Then, I shot handheld, with the 35mm f1.4 lens and an iso of 5,000. It is very near the Estate featured and I liked the results very much but vowed to return, with tripod, to enable a proper shot, without compromise in shutter speed, aperture or iso setting.

This time though, the flat above had its lights on, so I had to be dead quiet - what would they think if they looked out - and down? An unlikely scenario, but I wanted to be discrete and I am standing in the entrance driveway, after all.

So, what DO we have here?

An empty room with windows toward the main road, on the right and a window on the far side, to the left. And as the various nearby streetlights flood in, the resulting pools of shadowy light, onto the wooden floor.

Then, we have the reflection in the window glass that the camera is peering through - and its reflection of everything behind me. Including the camera (the big black blob, on the left) the stone wall across the driveway, the sign plus the cars - and light trails! So, I had to stand well to the side so I wasn't in it too!

Look further on LARGE and you can see the outline of the camera, again, as a shadow of the window it's looking through and through the window on the far side.

The piece of string in the foreground is to open/close the blinds. It was important to leave the knot at the top, so we know better what it was and that it doesn't appear to dissect the image as much. There was little traffic and only a few cars so the red tail lights aren't up to much, but just enough to register.

It was all an orangey hue, which I was originally going to go for. As is usual, I could not resist a black and conversion and so (eventually!) came to this. The result may look just like another derelict old building interior but I have tried to allow it to be cleverer, more puzzle-like than is usual for the genre and with a whole lot more care taken in its preparation, too.

Lens is Sigma EX 24-70mm f2.8 on the big old FX D700