Alton Towers Hotel Christmas lights

MK Illuminations have been kind enough to commission me to shoot more Christmas lights this year and after putting most of the wedding albums to bed, I finally made a start on the shoot beginning with Alton Towers hotel. I arrived on site at around 3:30pm to scout the place and I began taking a few shots but the sky wasn’t quite right – there is a sweet spot just before dark when the sky goes a royal blue and makes the lights pop and look really warm and bright. This light disappears very quickly and soon goes black and, as daft as it sounds, the blacker the sky the worse it is to shoot the lights. Here are a few, but it’s time to clean the sensor (at f/22 every speck of dirt shows like a boulder in the skies!) and then I’m heading down to Biscester Village Outlet in Oxfordshire tomorrow for more lights shooting!