It was bonfire night recently and I'd had it at the back of my mind I would be taking some hopefully spectacular fireworks shots during the night. A few days before that, on the last working day of my 2 week time off, wanted to do a night tour around some London landmarks for some night shots. Unfortunately due to other home commitments I couldn't set off until after 8pm and had to drag my older daughter to accompany me (not without a decent bribe though!). I'd researched advice via some forums talking about safety when shooting at night and the general recommendation was to have someone with you to discourage over-exuberant drinkers or others with more sinister intentions, moreso being a Friday night. I wasn't setup at my first location until after 9pm so I knew I had very limited time. The results of the night can be found in my Gallery named "Nightshots" that hopefully will contain lots more similar ones in future.

My nervousness wasn't helped by the odd people sauntering over to where we were trying to make small talk about our activities while I tried to remain polite and responsive to their enquiries. I certainly wasn't interested at the time in what camera they happened to be considering buying or the most appropriate lens to get for a night moon shot!

Anyway thankfully we ended the session after some 90 minutes staying at more or less the same without any significanty incident and took the Underground back to where I'd parked my car by Tottenham Hale station. And that's when the night turned rather sour. I unlocked the driver side door and immediately noticed broken pieces of glass strewn all over the inside. It didn't need a genius to work out what had happened and it dawned on me that someone had  smashed my window to break into my car - something I had never ever experienced before.

My first thought, to my relief, was thank goodness I hadn't left any of my gear in the car as it would have been easy pickings. A few inconsequential items were taken from the glove compartment, but other than that I got away from that experience relatively unscathed. The Old Bill came, took my details, etc, and sent me on my way  which meant it was well past midnight before we returned home.

So, bonfire night came and went the following Friday and it was a case of not yet having the mindset to risk repeating the previous Friday's experience...