Canon M6 25 mm, ISO 100, 5 sec @ f/16

A recently built roundabout near me has red street lighting installed, apparently for the benefit of bats. I thought this would make a decent photo when the conditions were right and today was the day! Heavy fog throughout the day persisted into the evening and I decided to try my luck. I was pleased to see a red glow in the distance as I made my way there and the challenge then became three-fold:

• First, to find a position where the effect of the fog was pronounced enough,
• Next to determine the distance at which other details and colours were neither too prominent nor missing; I think the blue sign in the middle of the image tells us that this is not simply a monochrome conversion.
• Finally, the exposure time determined the level of blooming on the lights and I found 5 seconds to be the optimal time.

In terms of post processing, the image is simply cropped and the contrast increased slightly.

I have called this ‘Close Encounters’ as the arrangement of the light and the their direction reminds me of the spaceship in Steven Spielberg‘s 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.