South Bank | Weekly Photo #26
I love the “old-worldly London” feeling I get from this particular view along the South Bank. In particular, the peaceful, sweeping path lit by ornate street lamps and the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral nestled nicely in the background. The dome really does give the image that classic London look.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 55mm | 2.6 Seconds | f/11 | ISO200
“To lose patience is to lose the battle.” - Mahatma Gandhi
Those that follow my work will know that although I have been including the occasional person in some of my street work lately, I still prefer a cityscape image free of people to help simplify and declutter the London skyline as much as possible and people tend to be “easier” to remove using techniques such as long exposure photography or merging multiple exposures later in Photoshop. That being said, it can at times be rather tricky to remove people, especially when you happen to be shooting one of the busiest spots along the river and unless you arrive in the early hours of the morning, you will seldom be on your own here which is why capturing this photo needed quite a bit of patience. I was stood in this particular spot waiting for a big enough gap in the foot traffic for about 30 minutes before I got the clean composition I was hoping for.
On this particular evening way back in 2018, I was out shooting with my recently purchased Fujifilm XF55-200mm lens which I was using to take a panoramic image from Waterloo Bridge. Using a tripod isn’t really allowed along this stretch of the river so being a little cheeky, I set my Fuji XT2 onto the tripod which was parked next to a tree in a bid to keep it well out of the way of passing foot traffic. Thankfully I wasn’t approached while stood there.
How I chose the correct focal length when taking this photo
In my opinion, this image works better if taken with a medium focal length of around 40-60mm so it was a perfect time to have the new lens with me. Taken wider (zoomed out) you can include more of the scene which isn’t always a good thing as it can result in a more cluttered image with no clear focal point. Additionally, the wider you go, the more the background gets thrown much further back and rendered less significant and in a scene like this, the mid and background elements are critical to the composition.
On the flip side, too much focal length (zoomed right in) will prevent the inclusion of key elements such as St Paul’s dome or the trees on the right that act as a compositional frame helping to keep the attention on the main focal points such as the aforementioned dome. As you can see from the settings I used that are listed underneath the image, on this occasion, I stuck with 55mm which, in my opinion, worked best for this shot.
It pays to consider your focal length carefully. Play around with different settings while out in the field and check your framing carefully as this may be the difference between a snapshot you discard and a keeper.
Coming up I have a couple of “On Location” posts where I use just a single lens from the Fuji prime line up for the entire shoot to help me work on my composition and put the lenses through their paces. I will be sharing these posts over the next few weeks so keep an eye out for those.
Talk to you soon.
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.