Vivid Vistas | Weekly Photo #106
I have been taking cityscape photos of London for many years now and in that time, the night time view of the city from the Thames has been transformed by replacing the outdated orange street lights with new, modern light installations. Gone are the monotonous night time views of London, replaced with vibrant urban vistas which are more environmentally friendly to boot. Having photographed so many of these locations over the last 15 years or so, I decided to put together a list of what I consider my top ten night photography spots in London. Just like my other “top location” posts previously published, I also included some useful information to help plan a shoot such as the best time to go and if tripods can be used. Click here to read the blog, alternatively select the image below.
Towards the back end of last year, I took an early train into London with my camera and was greeted with some awesome foggy conditions. I spent a fantastic couple of hours walking around the city and taking photos along the way. I shared some of them in another blog post cunningly titled Photographing London in the Fog.
When the fog had finally lifted, I headed into the office for my day job but instead of heading home at the end of the day, I decided to walk along the River Thames to take a few nightscape photos in Westminster. With the modern lights adding colour to the city and with a relatively calm river providing some cracking reflections, I decided to get the camera out and capture some of the vivid riverside vistas on offer.
I took a number of photos as I wandered west, along the north side of the river, from Blackfriars to Westminster Bridge. The bend in the river near Waterloo Bridge provides the perfect vantage point to photograph the views looking both east towards the Shard and west towards the London Eye, so I spent a few minutes photographing in each direction before continuing along the river.
The next stop was directly in front of the London Eye. This one was a little trickier as not only did I have to carefully compose to avoid the boats and piers in the river, I also had the moon moving left to right directly behind it. My plan was to take two exposures, one for the scene and the other for the moon but however hard I tried, I could not get the moon to look right, and with the cloud constantly moving in front of it, there was no way I would be able to blend another exposure in seamlessly without it looking odd. It may well be a lack of Photoshop skills but I would much rather use the photo as is, rather than present a messy, badly blended version. It still looks ok, but it would be amazing with a sharp, well-exposed moon to the left of the London Eye. One for another day I suppose.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 11mm | 13 Seconds | f/16 | ISO200
My last stop was Westminster Bridge. It was pretty busy as usual on there so I had no option but to close the tripod right down and precariously rest it on a small area of the bridge wall which was just about big enough for a retracted tripod. I made my way to the south side of the bridge and stopped at the exact spot where the vertical lines of the London Eye were aligned.
In keeping with the theme to include the lights reflecting in the water, I placed the horizon in the centre of the frame so both the London Eye and its reflection were mirroring each other. I still had my wide-angle 10-24mm lens on the camera and decided to stick with it as I liked how it pushed the London Eye deeper into the scene, providing lots of space to breathe around it. The street lights and their reflections along the south bank were creating a nice line to lead the eye into the shot and this was also being accentuated by the effect the wide lens was having. So, once I had the composition lined up exactly how I wanted, I dialled in the settings and took the photo.
Although the city lights along the Thames are a lot better now, much of the city still has the warm coloured street lights and London continues to emit an orange ambient glow which I am not a fan of in my images. So, back in post, I cooled down the white balance to help eliminate that and then went to work on the colours and tones until I had the photo exactly how I wanted.
I’m not really into astrophotography so when out in the natural landscape, photography stops for me when the sun goes down which is far from the case in London, so, I look forward to taking more urban nightscapes in the city later this year.
Until next time.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.