London of course

When I was looking for a suitable IT course to go on through work, London sprang
to mind for 2 reasons.

Firstly I've not seen my mate Jamie for 3 years, and a few others for a good
while, so it's about time I went down.

Second, I really wanted to take the camera out for a shoot - it's got the
best architecture in the country and loads of it, so what better for an
architecture tog than a night there?

Well maybe a sunny evening with a long sunset - but being January, this'll
do.

I met up with a guy called Luis I met through www.ephotozine.co.uk
in Piccadilly Circus, then worked our way down to the national gallery, Trafalgar
square, Whitehall, Westminster abbey and parliament, the Thames and London eye
and finally to the centenary bridge looking back to Westminster bridge.

Four and a half hours, lots of HDR and some classy-ish results.

My main issue was that I'd lost my cable release, so had to hand-trigger the
shots! It's taken the edge off a few, but when large, it's not that bad. I can
spot it, but I'm sure most would not.

So the shots..

This one's a classic front on shot of the national gallery, love this building,
huge facade, sprawling wings, makes you proud to be English

This one's the gallery again, a HDR of 3 shots covering 6 stops. the bright
light is a pain, but what can you do? Also, the church of st. martin in the
fields would be better without the scaffold!

Here's the last shot of the night, a RAW from the centenary bridge which runs
parallel to the Charing Cross rail line.

A shot of the third most iconic thing in London, after Tower Bridge and
Westminster (or is the Eye now third?)

A beefy phone box down by Westminster. The top of this thing was huge, on
seriods, compared to what we used to get in provincial england. I tried to get
both towers in the shot and deliberatley dodged the road sign to show you where
we are.... if you needed any promptring!

If you want to re-create this, stand just below the statue of Boudica and
you're in the money. A HDR of 3 shots

Top left of trafalgar square as you look up from whitehall, the shadows are
people walking through my HDR shot - inconsiderate b'stards!

This is facing directly away from the centre of the national gallery, the
people sat still ehough for 20 seconds for an HDR to be made, cheers folks

And finally, I couldn't quite get a landscape oriented shot from where I was
stood, to improvised - the diagonal line in compositional terms can state
"unease" or "instability", so I thought it amusing to make
it look like the huge Eye was unstable!

Well that's a few of the shots I managed when down there with Luis.

That's one thing people seem to forget about photography, with the web and
photo upload sites booming, photography has become a social thing to do - I'm
pretty sure that with a few days notice, you could get a meet going anywhere in
the UK - so next time you're away on business, tell people where you are on a
forum, you may get a fun character like Luis to tog with for a night... or even
me!

A new bridge in Leeds

I was out with a fellow photographer called Richard the other night, getting some HDR and RAW shots in Leeds when he mentioned this new bridge down by all the new flats on Wellington Street.

So we headed down there, you can get to it from the riverside next to the new entrance to the station by wetherspoons.

It's a curvey number, reminiscent of the Gateshead Milennium bridge, only very small and doesn't appear to tilt when ships come in!


These first 2 shots are with my 80-200 F2.8, taken from a little way back with a wideish aperture so that I got the foreground to blur a little, espcecially the decking.

The blue tones come from lowering the colour temperature - you can do this by setting the whilte balance to Tungsten on your camera.



And finally the shot of the deck - this is really low with a 17mm lens, the blues are done in the same way as above

2008 - a dull start....

Well a new year and a new grey sky to look at. It seems to be sod's law that we get nice days midweek when I'm stuck behind a desk at work, then at the weekend it's just dark and horrible. Well at least it is today anyway.

And yesterday!

The last 2 weekends have been so-so around Leeds, pretty sunny last weekend, but I've always wanted a classy shoot around Swaledale. It's one of the more northern of the Yorkshire dales, Teesdale is the next up and I think most of that's in Durham, so swale may we ll be the most northern. All that means is that it takes longer to get to and costs more in juice!

Last week I got to Richmmond, all very nice. then I drove up towards Muker and Reeth and saw the light fail, the warmth abandon me and the rain start to fall. Now as a photographer, I really should have turned back and went with the light, but I had a mental picture of what I was after - I'd been on multimap looking at roads and things for decent viewing points, so went on.

Annoyingly it rained harder and harder, the roads I found had fantastice views as planned, only of cluds rather than the barns that adorn this magnificent valley.

Ah well, there was light in the next valley - wensleydale.


A more famous valley, what with the cheese, Hawes, Hardraw Force and Aysgarth Falls. But my light wasn't to be seen, when I got to the top of a cold lonely pass, I could see sheets of rain filling the rivers and streams. There was a little light over in the next valley, Wharfdale, but to get to that would have taken too long and sunset would have come and gone. So I just drove slowly and took photos out of my car window - getting out would mean wet lenses and a drenched me!

After a while and rejoining the main leyburn-hawes road at Bainbridge, I was resigned to going ho9me having blown another £25 on diesel for nothing when I saw a sign saying "semerwater 2 1/2 miles".

I'll have driven past that sign 10 times in the last 3 years and never thought anything of it, but at a loss, I thought there was nothing to loose.


Over a steep hill and there it was, Yorkshire's biggest natural lake sat glimmering in the dusk light. it's nothing like a lake district lake, it's more the size of Blea Tarn than Coniston, and the surrounding hills are gentle rather than the screes of Wastwater.

At the top of the hill was a good shot looking over the whole of the valley, but when you get to the bottom there's a little more to play with. First there's the bridge, a humped backed little stone affair, it reflects well in the slow outlet water.

Then there's lot of bushes and trees reflecting in the still waters.

A little further there's 2 stones in the water, boulders 1/2 submerged.

Near those is a landing platform for boats, this was hauled ashore for the winter, so made quite an interesting diversion. And a little further still, there was a fence wandering into the water and a part sumberged gate.

Quite a bit really, and a lot of it is within my style of landscaping, using perspective and reflections along with colour so set a scene.

That kept me occupied for a good hour till it was almost pitch black, then I headed home.

So a lost day was recovered in the end, I think most days can be rescued if you're willing to stay out, try something new, discover places and just be persistant. For me, the only thing that stops me doing that is a hangover, you've got to have perfect conditions to operate effectively and enthusiastically with one of those!!

Lets hope for some better conditions soon eh?