Under Westminster Bridge | Weekly Photo #45
It is inevitable that as time goes by, photography styles change and I’m no exception to this. Up until about 2 to 3 years ago, my approach to editing was to try and create high impact, stand out photos with lots of contrast and colour but I could be guilty of pushing every photo in this direction, some past their limits which, when looking back was a result of my immaturity and lack of patience, focusing on the result above all else. More recently, over the last couple of years, my style is changing again and I’ve started to appreciate that I don’t need to make every photo I take stand out in the same way but instead, I have started to enjoy capturing images in all conditions and instead of pushing the photo to look a particular way, I try to be more sympathetic to the subject and conditions it was taken without forcing it to be something it’s not during post-processing.
Fujifilm XT-10 | XF18-55mm | 21 mm | 0.6 Sec | f/10 | ISO200
As pretty much all of the world is stuck in their homes at the moment, there’s not much in the way of opportunity to get out and shoot so I have been spending my time getting my photographic house in order by getting through some of my editing backlog, organising some files, checking my backups and having a bit of fun printing some of my recent photos. In addition to those things, I’ve been looking through some of my older photos and having a go at re-editing a few to see how they might be improved using newer features since released in Lightroom and a few upgraded editing skills of my own. One photo I had a go at re-editing was this one I took in 2016 of the Elizabeth Tower and the Houses of Parliament from under Westminster Bridge.
Even though it was about 4 years ago, I remember this day well. It was my very first trip into London after switching from my Nikon D90 to the Fujifilm X-T10 and I was excited to be in the city to put the camera through its paces. As I crossed Westminster Bridge, the heavens opened and without any kind of weather sealing on this camera and lens combo, I had no protection from the rain so I ducked under the bridge to get some shelter. While I waited for the rain to die down, I spotted this fantastic view of the Elizabeth Tower framed by the arched entrance to the tunnel. Although it was still raining, there were still plenty of people passing through, so I moved to the back, set up my tripod, and when a suitable gap in the foot traffic appeared, I grabbed the shot.
When I first processed this photo in 2016, I didn’t take into account the conditions while editing the photo and in my opinion, tried too hard to introduce colour and warmth to the photo to make it pop but looking back, it was a dull, grey and wet evening and I wanted this mood to show through in the final photo so I brought those colours back down, cooled off the white balance and pulled the shadows down just a little to darken areas around the frame.
It’s a little strange because, at the time, I was happy with the first effort but after 4 years, that photo no longer represented my current taste and style and I’m a lot happier with this new and proved version which makes me wonder, how many other good photos do I have which I once dismissed? I guess there has never been a better time to go and have a look.
Please stay safe and talk to you 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.