Underneath the Arches

If you ever feel the urge to go out into Chinatown in Manchester to photograph the Chinese New Year Festivities on their New Years' Day, forget it.
I decided to do that, and all I found was a quite nicely lit square which was full of winos and vagabonds with not a celebrating Chinaperson in sight. Apparently, I should have gone on Sunday Night for the New year's eve bash. Still, undaunted I decided to take some photos with my little camera and a tiny tripod. Each shot was an exposure of ten seconds or so, and whilst I was doing it, I was uncomfortably aware of the presence of the aforementiond neds, and so soon moved myself on. Having got not much photographically, I thought I might get some atmospheric shots of some run-down bits of Manchester, but this time the plan was to stay in the car and mount the tripod on the dashboard taking the picture through the windscreen. Thjis proved to be an almost excellent idea, since I was always sitting down, and the car was nice and warm. The area I chose to photograph happened to also be a red-light district, and that's why I mentioned that it was almost an excellent idea. My constant movements in and out of the arches attracted the attention of the local constabulary, and as I left the area I was pulled over by a huge transit van full of policemen who were sort of wondering whether I might have been kerb-crawling. Having told thenm what I was doing, and afetr letting tham review my photographs as evidence, we had a very nice discussion about photography in general, and the difficulties of night-photography in particular. I shall now add the unwelcome attention of the police to general night photograpy problems.
Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to blip the van full of coppers, but I'm quite pleased with the one I did get.

The light trail is of a car whose driver was definitely not taking photographs.

And I'll say no more on the subject.