This was one of my more unusual shots, though I think by this point people had started to look out for my different visualisations of the world around us.

I had started to make a habit of wandering around with my camera as dusk fell, looking for different ways to capture the world around me. I guess I have always had a predilection towards the unusual, so as soon as I discovered the basics of low light photography, I was hooked.

This image brought more though. Some I had learned from local Flickr group meetings, especially perspective. In my first meet with these camera wielding enthusiasts, I was surprised by how often people would suddenly lay down on the floor. This had become almost second nature to me by the time I took this shot and it was too dark for anyone to be bothered by me laid across the boardwalk anyway. This low angle, gives it a very different perspective.

It is an unusual shot in other ways too. Photographers flock to Saltburn pier, especially at dusk in summer, you cannot get a clear shot of it from the beach for all the other people with tripod mounted camera capturing it’s silhouette against the sunset. Here I was looking for something different, up close, personal and detailed.

And I wanted bold lines, formed from shadows contrasted with the light spilling across the wooden boardwalk. The lines lead you into the image, the focus is set on the middle distance, which throws the nearest foreground detail out of focus but makes the fence work pin sharp.

And the sky, as I lay there positioning myself, changing camera settings, appeared toxic, on fire, something from a post apocalyptic world. Which doesn’t seem to far from the reality of the steel works and chemical factories belching out smoke into a the night.

The title of the shot was decided when I got home and reviewed the results in my monitor. The colour, harks back to the adverts in the 90’s, The future is bright, the future is Orange. That was one of the easiest and quickest titles to come up with.

The image is available to buy, via PhotoBox pro galleries in a variety of forms here.