On Location from Tate Modern to Waterloo
I wanted to capture an image I have previously taken at night from the Waterloo Bridge looking towards the Hungerford Bridge and London Eye. You get so much in this composition such as Big Ben, the Golden Jubilee Bridges without the image being too cluttered. As you may already know from previous posts, it is important to me that the cityscape images I take, although will include plenty of structures, are not too messy and distracting. See more about long exposure composition here.
To help visualise the route I took, below are the three locations I stopped during the evening shoot.
Location 1: Blackfriars Bridge
A composition I have taken before. I had an hour or so to kill before heading to Waterloo Bridge so armed with my Fuji X-T10 camera I started close by on the Blackfriars Pier. Three popular landmarks for the price of one being Tate Modern, the Millennium Bridge and The Shard further back.
Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 18mm | 40 Secs | f/11 | ISO200
Location 2: Oxo Tower, South Bank
A quick stop as the sun is setting across the Thames. Just down the river in the background is Waterloo Bridge and with the sun setting, I didn't have a huge amount of time. The building on the left is the base of the Oxo Tower. Yet another former power station along the Thames as was the Tate Modern (according to Wikipedia) in the previous picture. The Oxo Tower was acquired in the 1920's by the makers of the Oxo beef stock cubes. You can't miss it with the big sign on the tower. See another image of the tower taken from the end of the jetty here in a previous post.
Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 21mm | 3 Secs | f/11 | ISO200
Location 3: Waterloo Bridge
So on to the third and final location of the evening. This is one of my favourite views of the South Bank and London Eye. As mentioned at the beginning of the post there is so much to see from this viewpoint. I wanted to capture this view at sunset and knowing the sun will be off camera to the right at this time of year, it was an ideal time to revisit.
I certainly got lucky on this particular evening. The sun played its part in the performance perfectly. On went the trusty 10 stop ND filter to provide those smooth waters and slightly bury clouds leading the eye ever so subtly in towards the London Eye and Big Ben.
Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 23mm | 58 Secs | f/11 | ISO200
As that majestic sunset continued and once I had the shot I really wanted, I started to hunt for other compositions. I turned my camera a little right, towards the sun and snapped Charing Cross Station at the end of the Hungerford Bridge. The dynamic range in this shot was through the roof. The bridge and station building were very dark in the original raw file. I was amazed by how much detail I could bring out of the shadows in the Fuji raw. Very impressive indeed.
Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 26mm | 90 Secs | f/11 | ISO200
It's not often for the colours of sunset to remain in the sky as long as this. I normally find a composition and focus on it rather than trying too many different shots as the reds, pinks and oranges seldom remain for too long but on this occasion, I even had time to change my lens and try a few wider shots with the 10-24mm attached.
Fujifilm X-T10 | XF10-24mm | 26mm | 2 Secs | f/11 | ISO200
To finish off a pretty successful evening and while I was taking photos, I also had my other camera (Fuji X70) taking a shot every 3 seconds for me for the 35-40 minutes I was there to create a time-lapse video later which you can see here.