You may have seen my photos of the Trafalgar Square fountains, taken at about 10pm on a summer night, either here or on Flickr (where there are 5 shots). All of these are fairly long exposures (though short, compared to really long exposure shots, if that makes sense!), displaying the water of the fountains as a smooth, flowing stream. In daylight, of course, you can trap the fountains in a single instant so each drop falling is visible, but at night this simply isn’t possible.

Ordinarily, of course, I would use a tripod to ensure that these long-exposure shots come out nice and crisp. At around half a second long each at f/4 (the largest aperture my 17-40mm f/4L USM will shoot at), it’s not easy to come out with a decent shot. Thankfully, statues, buildings and fountains do – so how to get a nice, crisp shot without a tripod?

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I was passing through Trafalgar Square last night (as one must when travelling from one side of the city to the other during a tube strike) and finally got to see the upgraded fountains. They now pulsate with myriad different colours, which is not only quite an attractive thing for them to do (not to mention opening up the possibility of themed displays for patron saints’ days and so on), but also means you can get some cool nighttime shots of them in action. There’s a few more on flickr.

Also, in unrelated news, I must stop being so parenthetical (using brackets so much [like this]).