Tag: sodium light

#365daysofbiking Noir

Friday November 27th 2020 – I had been working from home but had to pop into work late afternoon for something that couldn’t wait the weekend out, so I grabbed the bike and went for it.

Returning in the early evening, I came along Green Lane and up the southern flank of the Black Cock Bridge at Bullings Heath, the tiny hamlet that was probably the genesis of the village of Walsall Wood – now a town of well over 10,000 people.

Bullings Heath, over a very high, daunting bridge from the rest of the urbanity it spawned still retains a bucolic feel and one of slight isolation at night; as you traverse Green Lane past Coppice Woods and Jockey Meadows where there are no streetlights, emerging into the sodium-lit hamlet is an almost cinematic experience, often replete with foxes, owls and bats.

Tonight, I stopped to hop on the canal and looked behind me in a moment when the moon was shielded by thick cloud, and there was very little natural light. It was really atmospheric and reminded me of a film noir.

It’s wonderful how moonlight, or the lack thereof can influence the feel of a place so dramatically.

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October 12th – It’s quite hard to take photos on such a rainy day. You find all the good pictures are facing the rainfall, and because the light is poor, you need long exposures, usually resulting in the lens gathering raindrops. I stopped on the Pier Street Bridge to check out the golden streetlight on the canal surface, and managed to keep the lens dry enough to capture the narrowboats in their moorings. Spinning round and interested in the combination of light, wet surface and steelwork, I didn’t realise I had gathered the raindrops. But they worked out quite well, really.