This week I was away in London on a training course with work, so I thought I would take advantage of the situation to take a few pictures out and about in London.
As I was travelling light I didn't want to lug my entire kit around so I opted to take just my standard kit lens and my new pancake lens with ultra wide angle converter. I was particularly keen to use the latter as I felt it would lend itself very well to city based photography. I also wanted to capture some night time-exposure pictures with the city lights, perhaps of tower bridge etc. - so I needed a tripod as well, I opted for my gorillapod as it is compact and easy to carry around whilst still offering excellent stability.
As it transpired I only had a couple of opportunities to get out and take photographs, both times were at night which was good for trying to capture the time-exposures I'd hoped for.
Night 1: I made my way to London Bridge, this allowed me to take shots of Tower Bride in the distance and the Shard also. I soon found that the 'night' mode was not going to produce the kind of photographs I was hoping for and switched to 'S'peed priority to enable me to set the shutter speed for a longer exposure. The tripod was a must for these shots obviously, but in hindsight there was probably still small vibration being transmitted from the passing cars into the bridge which prevented the very distant Tower bridge from being tac sharp in the shots.
I received some critique from the guys on the Fro Knows Photo forum of these pictures and one suggestion was to avoid the leading lines in The Shard photograph which leads your attention out of the picture - although at the time I had thought the light reflecting on this wall was nice I do now see how it affects your view. Both pictures also had an orange glow from the clouds & ambient light - something I addressed on night 2 when I took more shots. The best from night 1 are:
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| Tower bridge from London bridge |
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| The Shard |
Night 2: This time I decided to get closer to Tower bridge and get a better close up of it from the side bank. This also removed the risk of potential vibration from passing cars on the previous night. Having adjusted the exposure compensation settings I managed to avoid the orange glow from the clouds and was quite happy with the resulting pictures.
The final one I took whilst stood on the bridge itself and managed to get a nice view down the road during a break in the traffic - I think this probably stands out as the best picture of the group! The best pictures from night 2 are:
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| Tower Bridge |
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| Tower Bridge |
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| Tower Bridge |
Again I submitted for critique on the Fro Knows Photo site and something which was pointed out was that the first 4 pictures would benefit from something in the foreground - I of course instantly realised that having spent so much time concentrating on getting decent time-exposures I'd forgotten one of the golden rules of what is essentially still landscape photography, and that is to always try and have something in the fore & middle ground as well as the background.
All in all I was happy with the resulting pictures and appreciated the critique as it gives me something to concentrate on next time I attempt similar shots!
