Illu­mi­nat­ed Riv­er | Weekly Photo #17

With the summer ending and the nights drawing in, I’m looking forward to getting out and taking more photos of London at night. This photo was taken a few weeks ago as I wandered the north bank of the River Thames in the hunt for new compositions of London’s iconic structures. As I wandered towards London Bridge, I remembered it had recently had its lights updated as a part of the Illuminated River project (more on that below). Architecturally, London Bridge is a little underwhelming and it’s not always easy to get an interesting photo of it but I have seen this composition before and with the Shard in the background and the bridge creating the obligatory lead-in line, I had my composition locked in.

On to the tripod went my Fujifilm XT2 and wide-angle 10-24mm lens. I then waited for the lights to change so I could capture all those vibrant colours along the side of the bridge. I used an aperture of f/10 to help keep the image sharp from front to back but also, it helped me create these great starbursts throughout the image. The bright white starburst that seems to be floating above the bridge, that would be the moon. Pretty cool, right?

A night photo of an illuminated London Bridge and The Shard taken by Trevor Sherwin

Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 15mm | 6 Seconds | f/10 | ISO200

The Illuminated River project

There is an interesting project happening along the River Thames called Illuminated River. This is a long term, multi-year project to roll out new, modern, low power light installations across 15 bridges in central London meaning not only will all 15 bridges get a fresh new look at night, but it will also be more environmentally friendly to run them. So far, 4 bridges are complete including London Bridge above. This cohesive art installation will stretch 2.5 miles along the river, making it the longest of its kind in the world and having looked over the proposed designs on their website here, I think it is going to be a fantastic addition to this great city.

Photographing London Cityscapes at Night

In recent years there seems to be a more conscious effort to implement new and upgrade existing lighting schemes across the city. I guess this is helped by the emerging brighter, low power technologies the city architects and designers can take advantage of but whatever the reason, the results mean we can now capture some fantastic night-time cityscapes across the city.

Until next time.


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.

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La Piazza Desolata | Weekly Photo #16