London, 13th January 2011

I spent the day in London yesterday. My reason for going there was work-related - to see the BETT educational exhibition, at Kensington Olympia. However, I left the exhibition at about 3pm, which gave me plenty of time to do other things too.

I visited the Landscape Photographer of the Year exhibition first (more about that in my next blog entry), then as it started to get dark, I walked to Tower Bridge with the aim of getting some 'night' shots (I walked from Westminster, and it was a lot further than I'd predicted - next time I'm getting the Tube!). I had my chosen theme for assignment 5 - water - in mind when I took these.

I didn't have a tripod with me as I thought it would be a bit difficult to carry it around with me all day. Most of the shots I took were exposures of six seconds or so, so it was a matter of balancing the camera on a wall and trying not to drop it into the Thames!

Here's a shot of HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge (click the image to see a larger version):

I cropped this to panoramic format, as the foreground and sky didn't really hold much interest. I have also cloned out a distracting part of the wall to the right, and boosted the curves slightly.

Another shot, this time of City Hall:

The only place to rest the camera was on the wall next to the river, so I couldn't see through the viewfinder. It was a case of guessing where to point the camera! If I could afford it, I'd buy a lightweight carbon fibre tripod for occasions like this.

A shot of Tower Bridge:

 

It was raining heavily by this point, so as well as balancing the camera, I had to shield the lens with my other hand! The rain was so heavy that I gave up after this, and returned home.


Earlier in the day, I'd taken some photos around Westminster. There is no well-placed wall to rest the camera on there, so they were all handheld. I wanted some traffic movement, so the shutter speeds are comparatively long. As you can imagine, many of them were blurred - but a few of them, for instance the one below for which I braced myself against a tree (half a second exposure time), are passable at lower resolutions, although not perfect at full res.

100% crop:

All in all, I was happy with the shots I took yesterday. Elsewhere, the overcast sky may have ruined these shots, but in an urban area, the artificial light bounces off of the clouds at night and gives some colour to the sky. The rain was a bit of a problem, but I still enjoyed having the rare opportunity to be out and about with my camera. :)