Strathclyde Park – the place of lighting upgrades

Last time, I found they were installing solar lighting along the edges of paths in Strathclyde Park.

This time, an evening visit revealed some snazzy new LED (possibly solar-powered too) lighting units installed in the car park area.

It took a moment for these to register, then I realised I was looking at something new.

Very substantial columns holding an interesting circular array of LED light sources, and quite different from the more usual plain rectangular panels of LEDs used for most outdoor lighting installations, and street lights.

While it was already too dark for me to make out any of the details on these units, the one obvious feature was angled arrays of solar panels on top of the lighting head.

It’s nice to see someone actually THINK about their design, and how the LEDs are angled to light the surrounding area. So many installations appear to be designed by people who don’t have a clue, and mount the light sources pointing straight down, or straight out from the side, as if it was only possible to fit the sources only vertically or horizontally.

My neighbours suffer from the same ‘blindness’, and have mounted floodlights supposedly t light their back garden, but have just mounted them flat against the house wall – so they just shine straight into my rooms! Would it really tax their brains so much just to angle the fittings down, to shine INTO their garden rather than OVER?

Although I zoomed into the circular head unit with its ring of lights only a few seconds later, the resulting shot was a completely different thanks to the evening light.

There’s no detail, and the colour went crazy.

I couldn’t correct it using any processing filters, and any manual attempts caused the white light sources to change to whatever colour of correction or rebalancing I applied.

Looking at the histogram showed three distinct, narrow, red, green, and blue peaks, with almost no overlap or distribution

Changing the RGB levels didn’t do anything useful. The white lights became coloured lights, but I could not, for example, make the white central column look white, or make the sky look as it does in the pic above.

What I did find was that adjusting the contrast and gamma DID change the overall colour balance of the image, which was very odd.

Unfortunately, making these changes did not have the desired result, which was to improve the visibility of the name seen on the ring. That barely changed.

I took more than one of these shots – all showed the same effect, so it wasn’t simply one bad shot. Something was upsetting the metering and capture.

The name shown is ‘AUTONOMOUS’, with a graphic or logo to its right.

At the time of this post, I couldn’t track down any info on this item.

Clearly, I’ll have to try to remember to repeat that last shot during a daytime visit to the park, when there’s some ‘normal’ light bouncing around the place. Or maybe try flash?

It’s just weird how the large view came out as expected given the evening low light, but the close-up just went nuts under the same light.

Are there ‘Control Freaks’ on North Lanarkshire Council?

Fortunately, I don’t live under North Lanarkshire Council, so feel fairly safe to offer criticism.

However, I do wonder if there are ‘Control Freaks’ sitting on it, and if they are more interested in exercising control than actually working for the community.

I say this after reporting some faulty traffic lights/crossings on the recent roads constructed along with the pedestrian bridges installed at the northern end of Strathclyde Park.

Initially, I made the mistake of reporting this to South Lanarkshire Council (these lights are almost on the border between the two council areas), and was contacted by them to better identify the location, and this included a summary from an inspector, who actually visited the area and identified the location of the lights concerned.

This contrasts with the response when I reported the same issue to North Lanarkshire Council – which has not responded at all months later.

However, I have noted that North Lanarkshire is fairly quick, and persistent, in painting out murals painted on bridge pillars and tunnel walls, which I would classify as art, and not the abusive graffiti seen in some places. You can find past post of such things I have found in the area – all of which have been painted out.

The reason this came to mind was a visit to the park a while ago, where I noticed the addition of signs and barriers across the small bridge over the River Clyde at the Hamilton Low Parks.

The bridge has always had signs instructing cyclists to dismount, which nobody bothers with, either cyclists or pedestrians – at least I’ve never seen anyone bother.

However, there are now some fairly costly barriers in place to disrupt the path, and get in people’s way.

And, MORE signs have been added.

I wonder if there was any justification for this, or if there is one councillor who is employed by the “WeSaySo Corporation”, or is just miserable?

You can see the number of signs in the pics below, noting also that the park has a number of signs in place banning drone operation too, and one is included here. (No, I do NOT have a drone).

The signs make little difference to me – SEVEN at one end alone.

I can’t recall ever cycling across that bridge when there was anybody around, and even if there was, it’s more than wide enough for everyone to give a wide berth.

This just seems crazy and wasteful, given this path/location links to the footpath leading to Chatelherault, which is often narrower than this bridge, yet that path has no signs ordering cyclists to dismount.

Things should be appropriate – NOT just to satisfy the needs of some control freak.

If there IS good reason for this restriction, then they should install proper restrictions which make cycling impossible, rather than wasting taxpayers’ money with a pointless wide gate, which can be ridden through.

Strathclyde Park footbridge in the dark

Like all the bets I don’t make, I would have lost this one – that I already had a nighttime pic of this bridge filed away somewhere.

All I can say is that if I do, it’s lying in the ‘Unused’ pile.

Feeling frustrated after not being able to get out earlier in the day, I decided to jump on the bike and catch a quick roundtrip to Strathclyde Park and back, just for the mileage – this should be less than an hour. What I hadn’t counted on was how soon it got dark now, sadly confirming that the summer fun is effectively over, and long evening rides are a thing of the past for another year.

On the way back I detoured via Bothwell, where the back roads afford a decent view of the relatively new bridges leading to the park, and I took the chance to check out the view from the climb up the hill to the village.

It came out reasonably well, and even shows the start of the rain that was to come in a few hours, and had raised a Yellow Weather Alert in the area (check the area below the light near the middle of the pic, the rain is there).

I’m impressing myself with what I can do with night images now, and that’s without really knowing what toys are in the box of newer image processing tools I installed recently.

I’d hoped the solar path lights installed on the path leading to the bridge might have shown up, but their beam is too directional (the lenses direct it along the length of the path) and there’s virtually no light visible to the side.

Interestingly, the bridge has NO lighting of its own – although it appears to be brightly lit in this view, that light all comes from the overhead lighting for the road below.

As always, this is a hand held shot, with no tripod or support used.