After a spectacular sunset last Saturday that unfortunately, due to time of year, happen over London Bridge rather than behind The Shard, lead to an impressive blue hour scene.
The clouds slowly gathered around the top of the skyscraper and half moon rising in the sky.
Shot on a Tilt-Shift lens, to straighten the lines of the Shard and surrounding buildings.
Decided to try a new project based around London scenery as I do not currently have much opportunity to get out of town very often. Last Saturday evening, I found a wonderful, elevated platform that I had almost completely to myself for a couple of hours at the end of the day.
The scene above was of a tall shop that Tower Bridge opened up for. It came through, did the U-turn shown in this image and then sailed back down river towards the Channel, or is it North Sea?
The reason the boat in this shot looks a little like a toy is because I was using a tilt-shift lens.
Towards the end of a very grey day in London, the clouds started to break up as I was overlooking the Shard on the River Thames. Lights from London Bridge cast a golden hue in the foreground with the trace of a tourist boat passing. The tide was dropping fast, exposing the remains of wooden groynes beneath the waters, creating interesting shapes in the river.
A couple of other extra long exposure shots from last weekend. This one was taken close to the Millennium Bridge. As the river was low, I was able to walk down to the beach, to take a lower angle shot of the Thames and Shard. The sun had finally broken through the clod, albeit temporarily, to illuminate the scene and bath the Shard in light.
This next shot was of HMS Belfast, across the Thames, of the Walkie Talkie building with the Gherkin also visible. As the ship was floating on the river, it tended to bob around, so I diminished the length of the exposure to compensate. You can see this in comparison to the tub boats in the foreground, which are blurred.
This weekend, after gaining inspiration from a couple of YouTube tutorials, I tried my hand at some extra long exposure shots in London. The weather on Sunday was perfect, with a mixture of sun and cloud.
I walked around Tower Bridge and the London Assembly. However, it was the view from London Bridge that caught my eye. The image above is made up of 8 long exposure images stitched together. Each image was a 90 second exposure. The whole shot took around 15 minutes, including set up and transition time.
One thing to look out for is battery usage as extreme long exposure shots use up a lot of power, so I recommend carrying spares.
The shot below was my first shot of the day. Being a film photographer at heart, I used my handheld lightmeter plus Lee Filter Big Stopper app, to deduce the exposure.
All Terrain Photography 