With daylight savings just 4 short days away this is the last week for any Londoners wanting to leave work at 5:30, grab their tripods and walk straight out into the glorious light of the magic hour (with plenty of time to find your spot and get everything ready). As of next week the ideal time to get night shots will be pretty close to 7:30 - 8:30, so unless you're a late working city worker or work a long way from the photographic side of London (like Slough for instance - Shane, I'm talking about you!) it's not that convenient for a quick post work session. Of course in a few months time the magic hour will be starting at 9pm so there's plenty of time for a feed with friends and a few brews before heading out - but who feels like lugging round heavy camera gear and a tripod with a belly full of curry and beer?
With this in mind I've made the time to get out there twice in the past week after work with a message to London - lift up your skirt and show me what you've got! Last week I headed out with some crew from work and managed to get some nice shots of the Tate and Millenium Bridge, I might talk about this night in future blog, but today's blog is all about last night.
It's literally been a couple of years since I headed down to Tower Bridge with the trusty SLR so I was excited at the prospect of hitting it with better equipment and, more importantly, a better trained eye. I had a shot in mind that I really wanted to get but as the evening progressed I just couldn't quite get the framing of that particular shot, and with so many other great angles I moved on and went with some different ideas.
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| From Tower Bridge Tuesday |
As expected I encountered some problems from the tripod Nazis. As anyone who's ever wanted to take photos with a tripod in London has probably found out security guards are not your friends. Part of their remit is to make life for us photographers as difficult as possible, in recent times I've had various guards give me the following reasons for why I can't take photos with a tripod:
1) Security - I could be a terrorist planning an attack
2) Health and safety, someone could trip over my tripod
3) I must be a professional and by me taking a photo of their landmark (let's say the London Eye, or Tower Bridge last night) I am somehow robbing them of their financial dues. This one is particularly preposterous.
4) There are children around (because photos of kids in full winter gear ice skating is really what the perverts are after these days)
Last night I managed to Derren Brown this guy into submission though. WHen he came over I was all friendly, he told me I was zooming in a bit too much on a particular building so I showed him the photos I was taking with my ultra wide 10-20 lens, then he asked what I was using the photos for so I told him personal use then he said I was going to have to stop so I got a little testy and told him it was ridiculous as both reasons he had weren't valid in my case. I did the good cop bad cop routine all by myself and it seemed to work as he eventually walked off while I continued shooting. This was the shot I was taking, and the shot that I'd come there to take, so I didn't want to be rushed.
All in all a good night. I rounded it out with an attempted bus shot, but by this stage the sky was pitch black and it didn't make a nice backdrop, but I guess it turned out alright in the end with the conversion to black and white.
Until next time, get out there and make the most of this light!
2 comments:
So for photo-noobs... why exactly is the light good at these times? How can I recognize good light when I see it?
For the 30-40 minutes after the sun dips below the horizon the sky looks fairly non-descript to the naked eye, but you whack your camera on a tripod and take a photo and it comes out a magic deep blue colour. It also works well because the sky is roughly as bright as the landscape / streetscape so everything is nicely exposed and not too contrasty, ie, nothing is burnt out or too dark like you get in harsh sun light.
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