In thinking about where to go for night shots I immediately had in mind Dusseldorf which has two excellent Terraces so after some research I found that during the winter time both Spectator Terraces are open until 8pm giving good oppertunities for the kind of shots that I was looking for and of course if some good weather came along during daylight hours this would be a bonus.
I contacted a friend and suggested a four day visit to Dusseldorf during January 2003 and as it was mid winter this would give extra darkness hours on the Terrace so we decided to go and I started checking out our route to get there.
The cheapest way for us to go was by flying Ryanair from Prestwick to Stansted (return price GBP£32-78) and then connecting with a Buzz flight to Dusseldorf (return price GBP£54-94) so after checking with my friend that this was okay I first booked the Ryanair flight on the following morning with no problems and then went to the Buzz web site only to find that the late morning flight was now missing from the Book online page.
On checking the Buzz schedule the flight that I wanted was still listed but had vanished off of the booking page and it transpired that sometime between late the previous night when I was checking their flight times and 11am the following morning they had removed all midday flights from STN to DUS from January 1st 2003 onwards, I tend not to get the best of luck going on trips and usually something goes wrong but this was a new one for me.
I hadn't even got on the plane yet and my plans were already messed up. Having just booked the Ryanair PIK-STN flights there was now the problem that the first available one in the afternoon would get us into DUS after 6pm and therefore we would miss out on one days night time shooting which was not on so I got my thinking cap on and figured out what to do.
After looking at various alternatives that were far too expensive I thought that the best thing to do was to ignore the outbound leg of our Ryanair flights and travel down on the previous evening and sleep in the Terminal, this would have the benefit of us catching the first Buzz flight in the morning at 06-40 getting us into DUS at 09-10 and the extra cost was only GBP£12-91 including travel tax so that is what we decided to do.
We checked in at Prestwick for our 21-40 Ryanair flight to Stansted on the wednesday night and went through airside to find very few people there for the flight and it turned out that there was only 18 of us on the plane which was far fewer than any flight that I have ever been on.
Arriving at Stansted about 23-00 we did a quick scout around for comfy seats and managed to get a couple of spots at the top end of the Terminal but it was hard going trying to get any sleep as the floor cleaners were out and their machines were making loud alarm noises like a bin lorry reversing and this went on for hours it seemed so if you intend to park yourself in the STN Terminal overnight you can't go wrong bringing some ear plugs.
In December 2002 I made my first efforts to take some night time shots with a Tripod at Prestwick and after a few false starts I managed my first acceptable shots of a Ryanair 737 in December 2002 (below).
EI-CJH 737-200
Ryanair
(Prestwick 11-12-02).
I was quite pleased with this one and having not bothered with night time shots before I have became a lot more interested in
them as when you get it right they do look good but the tricky part is getting your settings correct and finding places that provide the views to take them.
Page 2
(Thursday 16th January 2003 photos) (13 photos)
Page 3
(Friday 17th January 2003 photos) (20 photos)
Page 4
(Saturday 18th January 2003 photos) (9 photos)
Page 5
(Sunday 19th January 2003 photos) (3 photos)
Page 6
(DUS- night time photo comments January 2003 photos) (10 photos)
Page 7
(Dusseldorf maps from my July 2002 visit) (14 photos)
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