Good Morning London | Weekly Photo #37
This is the view looking east, across London taken from up at the Sky Garden on a cold but beautiful January morning. From this vantage point, you get a stunning view of some of London’s iconic landmarks such as Tower Bridge and the Tower of London that once, themselves dominated London’s skyline.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 17mm | 1/60th Second | f/4.5 | ISO800
Photographing London’s Rooftops
This was my first attempt at capturing London’s rooftops from the Sky Garden so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I got up there. It was still dark when I arrived so I had a few minutes to wander around and pick out some possible compositions but it didn’t take too long to find this cracking composition of the city. I like the way the river flows into the frame taking you on a journey past Tower Bridge and all the way across to the Isle of Dogs where you will see some subtle silhouettes of the cluster of skyscrapers just poking through the horizon.
With the composition chosen, I had to get a bit creative with supporting my camera as it was still pretty dark and tripods aren’t allowed up in the Sky Garden. Thankfully I had my rather flat backpack with me which made for a somewhat stable platform to rest my camera and with the lens hood attached and pushed up against the glass helping to cut out any reflections, I positioned my camera ready to take the shot.
To capture the photo I wanted, I had to get the timing of the shot just right as I needed to wait long enough for the sun to light up the sky but not too long so that the city lights started to dim, leaving the foreground across the city muted and uninteresting. I wanted the photo to pop a bit more so with my aperture opened up and a shutter speed of 1/60th second, I started firing off shots as the sun rose towards the horizon in front of me.
The main challenge in post-production was to avoid pulling back the shadows in the foreground too much. If I had done so, the darker areas would look a bit too HDR-like and I would end up with a noisy, messy image. I had to tweak and adjust bit by bit to get the look I want whilst avoiding pushing the editing too far. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.
Here are a few tips to help anyone preparing to shoot from a high vantage point, through a glass window which I have taken from a previous post which also features more photos taken on this very morning: Photographing London’s Rooftops
#1: How to work around the no tripod rule:
Some locations that have a “no tripod” rule turn a blind eye to the mini tripods but having tried this in the Sky Garden, I was quickly corrected by the staff, so for this location big or small, you can’t use a tripod. Improvising, I laid my camera bag on the floor right up against the window and used it to rest my camera on. It was a little tricky but it did the trick and my images were nice and sharp.
#2: How to shoot through dirty windows:
This one is simple. get the aperture as wide as you can. Use f/2-4 if you can get that wide. Shooting these distances won’t give you any depth of field issues but even though most lenses are not their sharpest wide open, that’s the trade-off to render all of the marks on the window out of focus and invisible in the final image. Also, with a wider aperture, you will have a faster shutter speed which helps combat the no tripod rule above.
#3: How to avoid the reflections on the glass:
When taking photos through glass windows you will no doubt have some trouble with reflections. The cheap and easy way to avoid this is to place the end of the lens right up against the window. Although this might be effective, it restricts you to the angle you can shoot so you might not be able to capture the ideal composition. The alternative is to invest in a lens hood. I used the Ultimate Lens Hood for the photo above which fits around the end of the lens and creates a reflection-free area when pressed up against the window. I still find lens hoods like this a little tricky to use but at least I can capture the compositions I want without those pesky reflections.
I hope some of you will find these tips useful.
Talk to you 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.