On Location from One Wharf To Another

When I set out to a location, I normally have one of two approaches in mind. More often than not I will have a particular place I want to shoot and will focus all planning to give that shot the best chances of success, ensuring I am ready in the right place at the right time equipment at the ready. On the odd occasion, I set out on a photo walk with a start and/or finish in mind but the rest is a bit more of a "go with the flow" approach.

On this particular day, I had the endgame in mind which we will cover off a little later in the post. I started out on the train into London checking the weather and conditions on my favourite apps MeteoEarth and Suncalc. The first gives me information such as wind direction/strength and cloud cover and the second allows me to see where and when the sun will set based on my location. I plan to write about how I research a location and prepare for a shoot in more detail in a later post.

On this day, while the light was particularly harsh (not the best conditions) and I was just leaving the station, I decided to start my day with a shot of St George Wharf which I have been meaning to try for some time. Located in Vauxhall, this modern structure housing both residential and commercial properties is a popular subject for London cityscape photographers. Knowing the light wouldn't flatter a colour image, I set up with a black and white image in mind looking for the contrast as the sun (coming in from the right) hit the building. As with a lot of my shots taken by the Thames, I went straight for the natural density filter to give me a longer exposure and smooth out the water allowing the detailed architecture to contrast nicely against the reflective, uncluttered water in the foreground. I had to crop quite tightly to avoid some cranes and other buildings. I would have liked more wind to also smooth out the clouds a bit more but you rarely get all the boxes ticked in photography. After some processing in Adobe Lightroom this was the result and my favourite shot for the day.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 18mm | 3 Secs | f/8 | ISO200

Knowing I still had plenty of time to get to the final location I crossed the Vauxhall Bridge and decided to walk the south bank to Westminster and scout for future shots. I finished at Westminster Bridge and grabbed a quick shot just as the sun was getting lower in the sky and casting a slightly warmer light across the scene.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 20mm | 10 Secs | f/18 | ISO200

I jumped on the underground and headed to Canary Wharf which is where I intended to capture a few shots with the newly acquired Fuji XF10-24mm wide angle lens and also capture a time-lapse of the skyscrapers at sunset with the second camera (My trusty Fuji X70). I had visited this location once before but without the wide angle, I had to use photo stitching to capture the entire scene.

You can read more about my time-lapse on my blog post here: Behind the Lens: My First Time-lapse. Here I wrote about how I took the shot, what I learned and the finished video.

Ok, back to the shot. For a long time as the sun was lowering behind the buildings there was very little wind and the sky was clear and lacked drama which for the landscape photographer is rarely what we want. As the time-lapse was underway on the second camera, the sun dipped behind the horizon lighting up some small clouds that had slowly crept into the scene. Not all was lost thankfully so off I went snapping away with the 10-24mm lens attached at it's widest. The water in the foreground is called the Blackwall Basin and being so still provides some nice foreground reflections in the water.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 7 Secs | f/9 | ISO200

Once the sun had disappeared, the light faded fast so before I wrapped it up for the day I captured the buildings as the lights were being turned on which gave the scene a totally different look as you can see below.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 0.5 Secs | f/14 | ISO200

It is quite a leap of faith to head out without the shoot totally planned out so I am pleased to come away with a couple of keepers although it could have been very different. A time-lapse in the bag, my new lens tested and some new locations scouted for another time. Overall, a successful day.

Goodbye Sunrises, Hello Sunsets

Being partial to a sunset or two, I look forward to the days getting longer as we head towards the spring and summer months in London. As the sun rises earlier, it becomes more difficult for me to travel into the city in time to catch those softer more muted warm colours at dawn.

Not all is lost! As the sun sets later, that much sought after golden hour provides those richer warm colours for longer allowing me more time to capture those amazing sunsets in the city.

I took this photo in the summer of 2016 as the sun was disappearing and the dominant summer daylight was giving way to just a few hours of twilight.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 18mm | 140 Secs | f/9 | ISO200

Time for a project or two

It seems a bit late to talk about my projects for 2017 and there is a very good reason for this being I originally had no plans to do one. I recently attended some talks at The Photography Show 2017 and was inspired by some of the photographers that gave talks about their own photographic journeys and after seeing the value personal projects provided them, only then did I give it some serious thought.

Why start a photography project?

The thing about projects is that should be both defined and finite. A start and a finish with a pre-conceptualised or measurable outcome.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of benefits that a photography project provides but they are what I believe some of the most important ones.

• Diversify your creative work and trying something new

• Experiment outside your comfort zone

• Motivation to get out and take photos when stuck in a rut

• Opportunity to hone your photographic skills

• An opportunity to share the work and engage with people

Project One: Well, you're reading it.

That's right, blogging can be a project too. Now I won't go into too much detail about why I started to blog here. Maybe I'll save that for another post. What I will say is that blogging is new for me and the only way I will ever realise my goals which are to improve my creative writing and put myself out there is to make sure I stick at it and ensure regular literary output that I hope someone will enjoy reading too. The theory being, the more I write, the easier it will become.

So, the plan is straight-forward enough. As I write this in late March, I want to target 3 to 4 posts per month or around one per week. With 9 more months of 2017, I feel a target of 30 more posts this year is a good target to aspire too. This may not sound a lot but along with a day job, family, being out and about taking photos, this seems to me like a reasonable target.

Project two - Create a time-lapse compilation

It's not been long since I had a try at my first short time-lapse which you can read about here: Behind the Lens: My First Time-lapse

So, I have decided to set myself a goal to create a time-lapse compilation of London cityscapes capturing different views, conditions and light. For the remainder of 2017 I plan to look into shooting/post-production techniques, tools to help to capture the images and to finish a matching soundtrack to suit the video.

My projects are about trying something new, sharing my work and experimenting outside my comfort zone with different formats. How they will go, we will have to wait and see but I will post updates throughout the year as to how I'm getting on.

My First Time-lapse

On the Isle Of Dogs in London is the home of the financial powerhouses in London and the skyscrapers provide an ideal subject for some dramatic cityscape images. In 2016 I stumbled on a quiet residential corner of the island providing an ideal composition of some of the most recognisable buildings in London. I didn't have a wide-angle lens with me at the time so I decided to take a panoramic image.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 18mm | 3 Secs | f/8 | ISO200

I decided to return to this location for two reasons. First to test my new Fuji 10-24mm wide-angle lens and secondly, to use my second camera to take a series of images that I could merge to create a time-lapse video later. Below is a map of the location as it can be a little tricky to find.

Taking the Shot

As I was using my main camera and tripod for testing the new lens I set my second camera up on my travel tripod. My Fuji camera has an interval timer function built-in so I can take a maximum of 999 images separated by seconds, minutes or hours. As there was very little movement in the sky which is a must for landscape time-lapses I set the interval to 3 seconds. After realising my memory card would fit only 500 images (first lesson learned) I had to do some rough calculations and concluded I would have around 20 seconds of footage at the end. This would have to do for my first attempt.

Next, I focused the camera and then changed the mode to manual to ensure no refocusing as the images were taken. At this point, I should have taken a few test shots as this would have shown me the images were ever so slightly out of focus (second lesson learned). With my camera set to aperture priority to allow the camera to adjust to the light conditions changing I was ready to go. I waited for the sun to disappear below the horizon and set the camera off taking the images until the card was full while I took some wide-angle shots with my other camera.

Once complete and at home, I imported the images into Adobe Lightroom and set about editing the shots. Here is an example of what I started with:

Fujifilm X70 | 55mm | 1/160th Sec | f/2.8 | ISO200

And after some basic editing, some tonal changes to enhance the colours and 16:9 crop ideal for the video I was ready with the final image.

The issue was I had another 499 other images to edit. or did I? The great thing about this software is that I can edit one image and then copy all edits to the remaining 500 shots to both save time and ensure a consistent looking shot throughout the final video.

I exported all images and using Adobe's Premiere Pro I imported all images as individual frames. Premiere Pro has a neat feature for this which saved a lot of time. I added the titles at the beginning and end of the video and out popped my first time-lapse video in all of its 4k beauty.

Well, what did I learn?

As above, I should have brought a bigger memory card. This would have allowed me to take the full 999 images and allowed me to shoot over a 50 minute period capturing a more significant change in the light.

Next, I needed to be more careful with the focus. Once you start, you cannot check and recompose the image. Being more diligent would have resulted in sharper images and improved results.

Overall, I'm happy with this first attempt but I did learn lots and I'm confident going forward they will get better and better.

On Location Photographing Westminster

There is nothing quite like London in the early morning. Yes, the light during sunset is more dramatic but the fresh morning air, the warm more subtle light and pre-rush hour tranquillity is quite something to experience. They say London is a city that never sleeps but I know that before everyone gets up to start their day as the sun is rising on a clear Tuesday morning in February, it most certainly does.

I decided to have an early morning stroll around Westminster Bridge and try to capture some of the icons of London in this area. I seem to gravitate towards the River Thames when taking sunrise and sunset images. I think about this sometimes and might elaborate more in another post as to why I enjoy being by the river but with regards my photography, London can be a difficult place to take the kind of uncluttered cityscape images I like to capture and with the space the river provides I get to include the water and sky in my images and really focus on the subject and image I am trying to create.

On this particular morning, the sky was clear and the air was fresh and although a clear sky is not one of the usual recipes for capturing dramatic landscape photos, the sun played its part to ensure there was a nice amount of colour in the final images.

So after exiting Westminster Underground Station, I headed to the bridge to find a composition. The sun had yet to make an appearance but the pre-sunrise magenta was in the sky. I composed a more abstract image of the London Eye with one of the ornate bridge lamp posts in the foreground. This was probably my favourite image of the morning.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 55mm | 1/8th Sec | f/8 | ISO200

Directly opposite the Palace of Westminster on the opposite side of the river is St. Thomas' Hospital. In the gardens, there is metallic fountain sculpted in 1973 by Russian artist Naum Gabo called Revolving Torsion. To declutter the image a little, I took a long exposure to get the silky smooth water as it enters the pool.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 25mm | 30 Secs | f/8 | ISO200

I popped down underneath the bridge to the underpass where I wanted to recapture a classic composition of Elizabeth Tower (one of many names given to the tower). What makes this shot so popular is the brickwork framing the archway provides.

Fujifilm X-T10 | XF18-55mm | 20mm | 1/80th Sec | f/8 | ISO200

Although with a more dramatic, cloudy sky, these images would be quite different although on reflection the simplicity and uncluttered look of these shots makes them fit nicely with the feeling I get wondering around London while it is resting before the start of another busy day.

My First Blog Post!

So, I finally did it. I finally started my first blog to share my photography thoughts, experiences and some behind the scenes tips and tricks I use while out and about with my camera.

I have to admit, I'm not the writing type and I have never done anything like this before so part of the reason is also to challenge myself to create this journal of photography related topics. On this blogging journey, I will make mistakes I'm sure but I have to start somewhere, right?

So here it goes!!

I am a 30 something man that got the photography bug around 10 or so years ago. I have a technical day job and found photography gave me an opportunity to do something visually creative. Up until around a year ago my photography craft was a bit stop-start due to many things from inspiration, motivation and probably most importantly having a young family and a full-time job and just finding the free time was hard enough.

I'm sure it is no coincidence that in 2016 I moved from being a Nikon shooter to using Fujifilm cameras and since then I have been spending all the free time I can find photographing London and the South East of England and my motivation has never been stronger. Now, I'm not just all about the gear and won't be spending lots of my time writing about equipment but what I will say is that I have never been happier with the Fuji kit I now use and being happy with the equipment you use in any craft will have a positive effect on your work. That's true for me anyhow. To see an up to date list of kit I use, pop over to my about page here for a breakdown 

What kind of photographer am I?

I enjoy taking photos of landscapes but I particularly love a cityscape and this is really where I caught the photography bug. Living so near London I have a great subject right on my doorstep. I do like an image which has a great subject and stunning colour. This sort of thing...

Well, what's next?

Up next, I plan to write about my photographic and blogging journey, be it London, around the UK or from any trips I take wider afield. There will be background stories from images I take titled "Behind the Lens", tips and tricks I want to write about and much more so do stay tuned.