Night of a Thousand Candles 12' 14

Bruce and I made our now annual trip to   Brookgreen Gardens to attend their Night of a Thousand Candles Festival..  This is one of our favorite events of the holiday season and one we always look forward to attending..  

BJ  in the garden

For nine evenings in December all 500 acres of the garden are lighted by holiday displays and  remain open until 10 pm giving the public an opportunity to explore the gardens after dark.. 

CC with camera

For photographers, the event offers a rare opportunity to capture nocturnal views of  the garden's  grounds and the magnificent sculptures .   No matter how cold the weather, Bruce and I bundle up warmly enough to spend every minute we can  before the gates close on us.We come fully prepared with cameras, extra batteries, mono-pods, and spotlights.  About the only thing that can stop us is a rain heavy enough to damage our equipment and damp out the candles..  Unfortunately for the past couple of  years , this is exactly what has happened..  Rather than be rained out again, Brookgreen has changed the event's lighting from being 'The Night of a Thousand Candles' to what looked this year to be 'The Night of Ten Thousand LEDs' .  

The result were strikingly different in the kind of photographs one could capture.

2011 Candle it tree

For example compare the  photograph  above I took in 2011 of the candle lit Christmas tree

  with the blue mini-light trees that Bruce took at this years event.

2014 Blue mini-light trees

2011 photo of Sprites with floating candles and strobe backlighting

or the 2011 photo I took of the Sprites pond with the 2014 photo Bruce took of the

same sculpture pond

BJ's 2014 photo of sprites pond  with electric lights

2012 Tree Allee

Above is a photo I took in 2012  of the gardens  maganificent Tree Allee  and 

below is Bruce's photo of how it looked in 2014 with thousands of strands of mini-lights draping from every oak branch..

2014 Tree Allee

Personally I thought the number electric lights obscured the landscaping entirely ( as can be seen in several of the photos above)  

2012 Photo of a Heritage Tree

At best it made the landscaping play second fiddle to the lighting 

2014 Heritage Oak

That being said, the stronger lighting did provide some interesting opportunities to photograph the out of door sculpture collection. Check out the interesting effects we got from photographing the Sunflower Girl Sculpture in the  Children's Garden 

Lighted  from the front by a camera flash 

Lighted by a side strobe

Long exposure lighted by garden lights

Many of the other sculptures were equally interesting when seen by artificial light

Many of the other sculptures were equally interesting when seen by artificial light.

Snow Owl

For our part we both are hoping that the weather will eventually allow Brookgreen  to return to using more candles, but either way,  we will still  be attending the 2015 Festival.