Art college training taught me the value of putting time and effort into producing the best results and helped me visualise the type of images I wanted to produce in advance. It also taught me the value of judging my work critically, if necessary returning to see if a capture could be improved upon. If something is important to you, try to be as perfectionist as possible and set yourself a high standard. A project like this is also a good learning experience: you only really learn about how to improve doing this type of photography by attempting it.

I only went out when there was a completely clear night sky; this meant there was less light pollution produced by low clouds and that I was more likely to achieve a pure black sky rather than a murky grey one. For some shots taken on roads in the city centre I would go out very early in the morning so as to avoid having other traffic included in the shot. The biggest challenge on some shots was working out how close I could position the camera in relation to the tram tracks before a tram’s slipstream caused the camera to shake, or the camera became damaged by being struck by the tram. (Luckily my camera stayed intact.)

My equipment was a Nikon D90 fitted with a Sigma 18-35 f1.8 lens mounted on a tripod. Exposure times were controlled by a shutter release cable. The lens aperture was at ƒ/16.0, exposure compensation at its darkest setting and ISO at 200. White balance was set in Kelvin. Some tips I can pass on are: Make all the changes to your camera’s settings at home before you leave the house; don’t try and change them in the dark and cold on location. Carry a torch if your tripod has a spirit level and start taking shots as soon as you’re set up to help you achieve optimum framing and shutter speed (measured in seconds). I shoot in RAW and did post in Photoshop Elements, mainly adjusting Levels.

One unexpected discovery I made was that passersby, once they saw a DSLR camera, would occasionally approach and ask for their photo to be taken. As my DSLR was set up for long exposures I carried a small compact camera in a pocket, just in case I was asked to take a snap of strangers. Oddly, this satisfied them; no one ever asked to see their picture!