Smokin' Silbury Hill at Southampton Docks!

At Sunset

(It's not really https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2289150088334805842
Silbury Hill, folks...)

Been rather unwell of late but late this afternoon forced myself out, taking the 150-500mm out to Southampton Docks, for sunset. (other lenses were taken also).

Has anyone, EVER, in the entire history of EVER, been anything other than COLD standing around at either sunrise or sunset on Southampton's Town Quay??

Thermal hat, big coat, sweatshirt and I was still COLD. 

The wind gusted and blew and frankly made the Big Sig useless on a BIG heavy tripod. It's not the tripod's fault, it's the len's, it's so loosely constructed that there's play at the very front when extended, despite the tripod collar securely holding the lens in front of the mount. You can even see it move in the viewfinder during gusts of wind and so, any amount of playing around with very long exposures, bumping up the iso into the thousands for shorter times, even trying the OS stabilisation (that last one had DIRE results), so meaning that all my attempts of zoomed in dusk and night shots of the distant docks all wonderfully lit up, were a disaster.

Whilst the sun was still up, then exposures were very short, as with this strange shot of the ... er, whatever it is. I've often snapped this shiny domed sometimes smoking domey thingy, but I have to admit that this must be my muther of all shots, of whatever it is...

I did get good results later on with the 18-140mm Nikkor, despite its slow speed, its much shorter physical length meant no wobbling and some of these look promising.

Problems on South West trains tonight (it says that their system matching staff with rosters was up the shoot) and so I found there was no train home between 9pm and 11.40pm!

Not relishing the prospect of loitering with intent in charge of a large tripod on Saturday night in what can be quite a rough town, I was not happy.... BUT, of course, I found plenty to shoot elsewhere - many haven't got a good word for Southampton, but I can always find something interesting to snap, almost anywhere.