Martin Snelling - 

You know Summer is over when you find yourself thinking about which cardigan you’re going to wear while settling down in front of the tellybox to watch the new series’ of your favourite TV progs that have all magically appeared on your TiVo box in the same week. Not only do we have the Autumn/Winter TV schedule to contend with, we have the fact that there’s less daylight to take wonderful snappy snaps. So we find ourselves moving out of our comfort zone and into the twilight zone to find inspiration. And by jove you did!

Our last shooting challenge was all about capturing the city lights around you, and many of you took the opportunity to get out after dark (remember those screensavers; whatever happened to After Dark Screensavers?) and capture some stunning images. There were some similar themes across the entries, and you really got into the spirit of the challenge.

Again, choosing a winner was particularly difficult; but choose a winner I did… Alex Elliott’s image of the Menai Bridge is absolutely stunning, with a real sense of scale and foreboding if you should enter its mouth. The different coloured windows at the top are like eyes looking down on you, and the light trails look like they’re being sucked in through the bridge’s gap-toothed mouth.

Here’s how Alex captured the image on his Canon EOS 400D:

“The image is an archway of Menai Bridge in North Wales. It was taken with a 10mm focal length from a low angle in order to capture the scale of the bridge’s archways and hopefully convey the feeling of being swallowed by them as you pass through. The shutter speed was set to 25 seconds so that the passage of vehicles through the archway could be captured in the form of their light trails, a shorter shutter speed could have been used if it hadn’t been inconveniently quiet that evening. A tripod was used to keep the shot steady and a relatively small aperture of F/16 was used so that the image wasn’t overexposed.”

Again, a fantastic shot Alex; well done!

A close runner-up was Andrew Hardie with three fantastic images; I really liked the glint from the coin being tossed into the busker’s hat — great capture and perfect timing. Also, Andrew’s empty car park with the lights and the arrow leading the viewer into the picture; again, great work Andrew.

Andrew Hardie

Adam Douglas

Alex Sadeghio

Ian Gordon

Jason Wright

Muntazeem Nazir

Roland Lee

Ross Galypchak

Thomas James

Thanks again to everyone that participated; it was particularly challenging, and I’m super-chuffed that so many of you took the time to capture some great images. Click over here to see all the entries on our Flickr account.

Right, before I sign off for another week, I just wanted to let you know what the next Shooting Challenge will be — to give you a few days to think about what you are going to photograph. Start thinking about: Still Life. And I’m not talking dead people, unless you work in a morgue and can do me a John Doe toe-tag. Hmm, maybe save that one for a Halloween special, come to think of it…

Martin Snelling is a Hampshire-based man about town who works in the videogame industry. A keen photographer, Martin shoots on film and digital; he blogs here, and tweets here.