Lights, Camera and a Beer. Manchester Nocturnal Event Cache

Well I hadn't planned on attending this event cache but I'm certainly glad that I did.

Got a phone call of Mum in the morning to say that she was ill and would I go with Dad in her place, and even better, she would babysit the kids. Hmmmm that was about 11ish so I asked the question, so what time would we need to set off. Well about 4.30 was the response, mind racing, damn, I'm working till 4.30 and my kit isn't packed, and worst of all, didn't know where it all was either. Believe me, I'm not normally disorganised but these lastminute.com things send me in a bit of a tizz. So in my 1/2 hour lunch break I dashed around the house, dragging things out of cupboards, stuck the batteries on a quick charge and was sat back at the computer all organised with time to spare.

Although I enjoy taking photos, I've never been really that adventurous with the settings and haven't had the chance to play around with the manual settings, neither have I ever taken photos at night without the use of a flash. Hadn't a clue what to do so got Dad to give me a 5 minute whistle stop tour of the buttons on the camera before we set off.

Arrived in Manchester City Centre with time to spare and wandered over to meet the group. Well what do you look for...a group of people with camera's and tripod's...well yeah, that's exactly what it was like, all stood on the steps busy taking photos of the wheel. I thought I'd give it a try and test out the little bit of knowledge that I had of some of the settings on the camera. Actually I think I did a fairly good job for my first ever attempt.

The wheel at exchange square, Manchester

Got chatting to some of the group as we walked round, in particular Don "The Syllogiser" who had me in stitches for most of the evening...great hat as well!!!

Its amazing what you find out when chatting to people. We met a couple who were visiting from America and their hosts only come from the same village as I live in, it's such a small world. So to Mary of the Oz's, thank you for the lovely keyring, I think I'll be keeping that to myself rather than putting it into a cache.

So on we went, the town hall was next on the agenda and a bonus for the evening was to grab a local cache. Pretty much all of the group descended on the GZ and the log and pen was passed around for all to sign...a great group effort. We stayed around and took a few more pictures before moving on.

The group in front of the town hall

St Anne's Square

Next stop was Central station...I think. We spent quite a long time here taking a variety of shots. Also had to get my gloves out as it was getting incredibly cold :(

Central Station

Although I was getting quite comfortable with the settings, I was struggling a bit without the use of a tripod. The shutter opening for such a long time made it really difficult not to get camera shake and make the pictures blurred. Ahh well, you have to start from somewhere and learn from your mistakes (my excuse)

I'd always wondered how people got those great pics in the dark with the lights streaming from the back of cars...now I know...I tried it and Yippee...I got a photo. Now it may not be the greatest photo in the world but hey, with plenty more practice, I may get a picture that I could be really proud of.

Yay Car Lights!!!

At this point we decided that we had best be making tracks home, we were both starving hungry and had an hours journey to get home, so we bid goodbye to the group and made our way back to the car....detouring into Macdonalds for a large meal.

So a fantastic event cache was over with thanks to Kev AKA Scubaclogger for organising this very unique event. It was great and I hope that there will be many more to come.