First Light at More London | Weekly Photo #44
As I write this post, we in the UK are coming to the end of week two of our national lockdown and I can’t help but wonder, like many cities around the world, how much of a ghost town London must be right now. It’s strange when I think about it as I’m always trying to capture my cityscapes free of people as I like a more simple composition and too many can make my photos look a bit too busy. It’s one of the reasons why I make the effort to get up and out so early and London looking like this photo below 24 hours a day is strange to me. I truly hope humanity can get on top of the situation as fast as they can so the suffering can stop and we can all get back to something that resembles normality.
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF16mm F2.8 | 16mm | 8 Seconds | f/11 | ISO160
I’m pretty sure that this part of London is my favourite place to take photos at the moment as I’m constantly looking for opportunities to head here. It’s got everything a cityscape photographer wants from epic views at both sunrise and sunset, old and new architecture and plenty of opportunities to build layers and compositional interest into the image to boot.
On any given day, I’m happy if I get a single good image during a shoot but on a rare occasion, I get a bit lucky where I manage to capture a few photos that I would consider keepers. In fact, during this particular morning, I managed to grab 4 of them and this being the second I have shared to date. The first being in week 34 where I posted the photo I call City Blues.
On this shoot, I had with me my Fuji X-T30 and the 16mm 2.8 prime lens and as I was walking between More London and London Bridge I spend a bit of time around this area looking for compositions to capture. Using my small table-top tripod I keep in the bag, I rested the camera awkwardly on the ledge overlooking City Hall and Tower Bridge and went about taking this 8-second exposure seen here. The blue hour was still in full swing but what I like about the photo is the small amount of colourful pre-sunrise light peeking over the horizon and lighting up some of the clouds.
With the mid-level clouds and gap over by the horizon, it had the makings for an epic sunrise that day and it most certainly delivered. By the time I got over to London Bridge, the sky looked like it was on fire and probably the most dramatic sunrise I had ever seen in London. I haven’t quite finished editing that photo yet but once done, I will share it a future post.
Please try to stay safe and well and I will talk to you again next week.
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.