A quick non wedding video related post but I just wanted to share some lovely pictures I took around Birmingham city centre last week.
I love Birmingham, it used to be a regular haunt for me and as i had to go up for the evening and had some spare time I thought it would make as nice change to go on my own photography walk and see how the city looked at night.
We parked in Broadway Plaza near Broad Street and it was super cheap and super simple. 8 hours parking cost us £5.50 and if you only need a short trip you can park for an hour for only £1.50. The APCOA car park was ideally located for our trip being only 5 minutes walk from Broad Street and 10 minutes from the Arena Birmingham. Payment was also super simple with automatic number plate recognition meaning it was easy to pay and you can even pay when you get home on the website!
I started my photo walk at the Birmingham Arena, There was a Nicki Minaj concert taking place at the time but outside the arena was eerily quiet. I took some long exposure shots beside the famous canal and took a short walk down towards the restaurants that line the canal as it heads under Broad Street.
Having negotiated the tiny tunnel under Broad street I found myself in the Gas Street Basin. This is an area that I’ve not been to before and it was deserted and very dark! I fumbled my way across an old canal bridge that lead to some moorings and took some lovely images of the traditional canal barges up against the modern backdrop of Birmingham's financial district. I particularly like these shots showing the old vs new Birmingham landscape.
I headed on along Gas Street up towards ‘The Cube’ and the Mailbox.
My intention was to head over to the Bullring, picking up any nice shots along the way. This was my first opportunity to see the new Birmingham New Street station and Grand Central shopping area. On my last visit this was a giant construction site and it was now great to see it completed.
Just before arriving at the Selfridges building I found myself in the Bullring Outdoor market. Knowing this place is normally a hive of activity it was nice document the area in the dead of night. With all the stores empty it made for some nice leading line photography. There was a lovely smell in the air left over from the days trading. The smell of fruit and vegetables lingered on long after they had all been sold.
A short walk down Park Street lead me to my final destination - Selfridges at The Bull Ring. Probably one of the most iconic modern buildings in Birmingham right now, it had been photographed many times but i still wanted to get my own shots. You could arguably take any image of this building and it would look great but i opted to get a few nice closeups and find a way to get a shot of the whole building. I crossed the road to Selfridges multi storey car park and took the lift to floor 7 where you can get a lovely image of the building. I also ventured onto the car park roof to get some quick landscape images of the city centre. The Car park is private property so be sure to ask permission if you’d like to take any elaborate shots, especially if they require a tripod.
I’m really pleased with the images I managed to get of the changing landscape of Birmingham, you can see them all in the gallary at the bottom of the page. It will be interesting to see how it changes in the future as the Birmingham Metro continues to expand.
My full photo gallery from the night can be found below if you’d like to try this walk yourself, it will be interesting to see the pictures you find along the way. I’d love to see them so feel free to post links below.
Thanks for your time, I’d love to talk to you about anything photo or Wedding Videography related. I will be heading to other cities soon to continue to practice my night time photography. Get in touch if you know of a particular place i should visit.
Gareth x
