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!