Cold Street Photography

If you live in the UK, or have friends who live in the UK, or if you read the Sydney Morning Herald who seem to have an unnatural obsession with the motherland you'll know that we're having some pretty serious snow at the moment. In the spirit of striking while the iron is hot (or when the snow is cold as the case my be) I thought I'd do this blog entry about my shots today.

When I went to bed last night it was coming down pretty hard and was already settling on the road so I assumed London would be well and truly blanked come morning, and I was right. I set my alarm early with a view to setting out early and capturing some images en route to the office, and after being woken at 6:45 by a text message from a colleague telling me she wouldn't be in I was awake and ready for action.

I wanted to start my photos at Westminster, home of Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliment, however London Underground weren't coming the party and when I made it to London Bridge tube this is what was waiting for me on the connection to Westminster.

From London Snow 09

Now obviously I wasn't prepared to wait 17 minutes for a train that may or may not arrive, so I bravely ventured out and decided to make my way on foot to the big clock along the south bank of the River Thames.











And then I finally made it to promise land.





I got the camera out again on the way home, this time I ventured on foot to the Bank station and tubed it home from there, I was keen to shoot St Pauls in her snowy state before it all melted. I discovered a 10 foot snowman which must have been constructed by engineering students with the day off.





And then the best thing I saw all day. The spirit in the whole city was festive from the minute I woke up, adults in suits were having snowball fights, kids from the housing estate next to work were throwing snowballs from their balconies at unsuspecting passers by, thousands of snowmen of various sizes were being erected anywhere you could imagine, it was great. However, as I crossed the Millennium footbridge there was a barge passing underneath with half a dozen crew on the back, all of a sudden a few people on the bride made snowballs and started pegging them, then the crew started making their own and retaliating, I got into the act myself and Londoners were united. Then this HUGE barge decided he wanted some more so he turned around and headed back for round 2. As it approached there was palpable excitement on the bridge, punters were feverishly preparing their weapons of combat, stockpiling supplies and forming allies, while our rivals below were also forming strategies.









Good times indeed.

Tip of the week:

Yeah, that's right, another tip - and you thought last time was a once off? When shooting snow your camera's metering system will usually get tricked into thinking the bright white shouldn't actually be that bright and it underexposes the image, it's a good idea to overexpose your images by a stop or so prevent the snow from being a dull grey colour rather than pure white. Or you could just shoot RAW and fix it in 2 seconds later. The choice is yours.