4 Sides of London

As I mentioned last week this is supposed to be a weekly blog, now, no sooner had I finished posting last week's entry than I went out and took some images I was quite pleased with. The compulsion to do an ad hoc entry was strong, but I told myself to wait as I may not have any photos to post for my standard Monday/Tuesday update and I would look foolish. I obviously didn't think this through too much as when you're looking for work there are loads of opportunities to get out there with your gear and get snapping, so for today's installment I'll be featuring 4 shots taken on different outings over the last 7 days.

This first one was taken on the way back to the tube after an afternoon's shooting, after I'd put the camera away for the day. As I approached this guard I loved how the light reflected off his sword, how there was some light on his face, but not much elsewhere. I waited a few minutes for the crowds to clear, deliberately underexposed the image to highlight the sword, and made a point of having the sword cut diagonally up through the image for a dynamic composition. The lesson here is to always keep your eyes open even after the camera's gone away, you can always whip it out again.




This next photo was taken when I went to the Chelsea Huddersfield FA game at Stamford Bridge. The story here is the lengths I went to to smuggle in my giant white lens, a lens which attracts a lot of unwanted attention when it's brought out at a major sporting event. The lens is too big to fit into a normal pocket, but I've got a North Face super warm winter jacket which is actually 2 jackets in 1, and the inner jacket has large pockets, pockets big enough to fit a giant lens. So, on an unseasonably warm February day I arrived at the game wearing my warmest double jacket with a lens hidden between the layers, on my back was a camera bag which looks like a regular backpack but with a semi-hidden compartment on the bottom which housed my camera body. I'd mentally prepared myself, come up with lines to feed security, loaded the backpack with jumpers to avoid suspicion about carrying an empty bag, the whole nine yards. Well, I got to the gate, scanned my ticket and walked striaght on through to my seats without a security check it sight! Was sitting 2nd rown behind the goals so managed to get some nice shots, was hard to pick a winner but I've gone with England midfielder Frank Lampard celebrating his second goal.




This next one was taken on Sunday morning as a few of us headed out to Regents Park for a kick of the footy (a real footy, not a soccer ball). Glorious brisk clear London morning, lovely blue skies, great light from a sun low in the sky. I took most of my shots with my big white lens, but I think the best shots were taken at the end when I whipped out the super wide angle. My mate Andy wanted a shot of him doing an exaggerated kick so I lay on the ground and got him to run up and kick virtually right on top of me. Lens was set to 12mm (18mm equivalent) so I managed to get his whole body in shot. I love how the extreme wide angle distort the perception and makes his boot look massive.




Last but not least I've got a few houseguests from Adelaide staying with me at the moment. Yesterday was a glorious clear day so I took the opportunity to take them on a walking tour of some of the sights and brush up on my portrait skills. I tell you what, when you combine great light, quality lenses and glamourous models the photos basically take themselves. I took close to 400 shots and of those less than 50 shots were shots I would consider poor, the strike rate of over 80% was phenomenal, but not as phenomenal as the light on the Thames as the sun was setting. This image was taken with my Sigma 10-20 lens set at 14mm and my flashgun, I've done virtually no processing of the image apart from a very slight boost in contrast and saturation of the RAW image, but no more than your average camera would do when processing jpgs. It looked just like this.