This evening I ventured out to see the Tallinn Light Festival. Most of the lights on Pikk have been replaced with red lamps, and there are five installations of light along between the Three Sisters and Town Hall Square.
For all the people who’ve been asking me for photos, I’ve uploaded pictures of some of these to flickr. However it proved more difficult than I’d have liked to get even half-decent photos. The first problem was that I’d managed to leave my memory card at home! Rather than fighting my way back through the snow (I’d even had trouble getting out my front door as the snow was wedging it shut), I decided to just buy another card – I could do with a spare anyway! The bigger problem however was that I’m not really sure how to take good photographs of lights in the dark. And even aside from the purely technical questions, it’s hard to hold the camera still for long in snow and winds with an effective temperature -14°C!
I got reasonably plausible photos of four of the installations, but completely failed to get a good shot of the fifth; the Pong game that the Three Sisters Hotel was projecting onto the building opposite it. I also tried for a while to get a good photo of the entrance to the Old Town at Fat Margaret’s Tower showing the red lights stretching down Pikk. It was a good idea in theory, but I was completely unable to get a shot that wasn’t blurred, and by this point I was starting to lose feeling in my hands!
The inflatable hands near the Town Hall Square seem to get the most attention, especially as they spring to life as people go past, but I much preferred the strange installation at St. Olav’s.
