Circle of Light | Weekly Photo #48
Like most people, life gets quite busy, and rarely do I get time to sit down with a cuppa and enjoy a nice book but in the last couple of weeks, I have taken advantage of the time indoors and done just that. I love to read about the story behind the shot and the photographer’s personal thoughts about a particular image. It’s why I write these weekly posts after all. The book I’m reading at the moment is called “Masters of Landscape Photography” (Amazon UK link) and I think this is a great book for two reasons. Firstly, it features some stunning photos from 12 of the world’s top landscape photographers such as Joe Cornish and Art Wolfe. Secondly, each photo is accompanied by a few words written by the photographer about capturing and processing the respective image. Understanding the thought process and motivation to take a given photo helps understand the wider story that surrounds the image and for me at least, creates a deeper connection to the photograph itself. The book also includes some great questions and answers and includes some of the settings and equipment used for every photo shown. If, with everything that’s going on right now, you need some landscape photography inspiration, this might be just what the doctor ordered.
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF16mm F2.8 | 16mm | 15 Seconds | f/13 | ISO160
Around 5 years ago, back in my Nikon days, I took a similar-looking long exposure image of the London Eye which is still one of my favourite photos from back then and over the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to capture an updated version with my Fujifilm camera so it was sod’s law that the day conditions were good and the photo was on, I didn’t have my tripod with me.
To get a night-time long exposure photo like this a few different elements have to come together. Obviously, it needs to be dark and the lights on but still early enough that the London Eye is still running so the spinning movement can be captured. Next, you want to avoid a high tide so anything floating in the foreground is low enough to be out of shot. If not, you will need to point your camera higher, creating more distortion to correct later. You will also have too much sky and a lot less foreground meaning you would lose the lights and colour reflecting in the water.
I was heading out from Westminster Station to take some night shots of London with my Fuji X-T30 and newly acquired XF16mmF2.8 prime lens (which you can read all about here) and just before the heavens opened, I noticed that this photo was on but without a tripod, my only option was to rest my camera on my camera bag, shuffle it around a bit until the image was level and pointing in the right direction and once in position, I dialled in the settings (f/13, ISO160) and took the shot. The full list of settings can be seen underneath the photo.
Back in Adobe Lightroom, I needed to straighten the photo, adjust the white balance to cool down the orange tones created by the city lights and sharpened the photo using the high pass filter in Photoshop.
Stay safe, stay inspired.
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.