Colour Wheel | Weekly Photo #76
I hope everyone is doing well. It’s been just over a week of what some are calling “Lockdown 2” here in the UK. In reality, it’s not quite as strict as the lockdown back in March as the restrictions are concentrated on indoor venues and we are still ok to venture out alone or with the family to spend time outdoors. This is good news for the majority of us who like to spend time outdoors and importantly those that need it as spending that quiet time out, alone or with family and away from life’s distractions and stresses is incredibly important when keeping your mental health in check.
What it does mean is that I won’t be visiting London for a few weeks while I continue to work from home. staying out of the city is the right thing to do at the moment and that side of my photography will just have to wait. In the meantime, I’ll keep rummaging through my photo archive for photos of London to share with you and speaking of which, here’s a shot of the London Eye I took before sunrise back in January, which, incidentally, feels a lifetime ago now.
Fujifilm X-T30 | XF16mm F2 | 16mm | 9 Seconds | f/7.1 | ISO160
I took this photo while out on a pre-sunrise shoot in Westminster during a mild, but rather windy morning in January. I wanted to capture a photo of the London Eye along with these colourful lights from a slightly different composition that I had seen before. The main issue I have with photographing the London Eye from Westminster Bridge is that the composition is hard to get right and you often end up lots of the visual weight on the right created by the buildings over at County Hall but a lot less going on to the left of the London Eye which leads to an unbalanced frame, so, as I stood on the bridge, I wanted to find a way to add some interest to the left-hand side and create a more balanced composition.
After a minute or two, I spotted the floating platform on the nearside of the Thames and importantly, the lights were on so I could use the contrast it created as a feature in the frame. By placing it on the left-hand, lower third of the image, it added that much needed balance and interest to the composition I was after. I set my small tabletop tripod upon a flat section of the wall that flanks the bridge and with my wide 16mm prime lens attached to my Fujifilm X-T30 camera, I dialled in the settings and took the shot. I wasn’t after a super smooth long exposure as I still wanted a little texture in the water so I went for an exposure time of 9 seconds which was just long enough to help flatten the water a little to make it appear less busy and emphasise those colourful reflections.
As I did in a previous post, I have annotated the final image which I hope will help demonstrate my thoughts on the composition and what I was trying to achieve.
I hope you find these annotated photos useful and as ever, I would love to hear your thoughts so drop me a comment below
Once I had this photo of the London Eye in the bag, I walked across the bridge and managed to capture another shot with the telephoto lens looking in the opposite direction towards St George Wharf just as the blue hour was starting to show. You will find that photo here City Glow | Weekly Photo #40.
I’ll be back with another photo next week but in the meantime stay safe and be creative.
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.