Lights upon St Pauls

Recently the sky in London has always been red. In the past I have seen a multiple of colours including purple and once a green tone. I don’t know if its the Autumn season that has done this but I haven’t seen any other colour in a while.

The lights on St Paul’s were brighter for some reason on this night so you can see them lighting up the dome in the distance.

A Blue Aquarium Glow

The blue glow of the London Aquarium always makes the Southbank standout. Combined with the giant London Eye (that night lit up in green) it makes for a beautiful sight.

This long exposure captures the movement of the Millennium Wheel over a 30 second period.

Over the Thames

This photo was taken a for steps from yesterdays photo. It shows a view of St Paul’s Cathedral in the distance, all the way to the Gherkin near the centre of image.

Under the Bridge

The name of this photo lends itself to the wonderful Red Hot Chili Peppers. An interesting fact for you, well perhaps not interesting but a fact nonetheless, They were the first band that I ever saw in concert. Hyde Park in 2001.

Anyway enough of my rambling. This shot was taken from under the Millennium Bridge. I think it shows the structure well and I haven’t seen any shots that I can recall from this position. If you have one please post it in the replies.

Come On Up

Carrying on from yesterdays post, this is the place that we were walking too. We walked up the external staircase of the Haywood Gallery as we knew that it would offer is great views of the Thames at night. The words “Come On Up” are written there as a warm welcome to come and explore the roof tops.

I suppose this is a good time to say ”Come On UP” and visit me on all the usual networks.

You can Google+ me here, Facebook me here, or follow me on twitter here.

I often post lots of albums on Facebook before they are seen anywhere else. Lots of unseen London images have just been uploaded so go check it out if you like and I’ll buy you a beer if you start following me or ‘Like’ my page.

The OXO and more…again.

I first visited this spot to take photos in 2009 when I first started taking HDR photos. I took a photo from nearly exactly the same spot. I can see that from looking at that photo here, that I have improved alot. The old photo had the dreaded halo on buildings and was a very overdone HDR.

Now I think that I have a much better, and perhaps more subtle, effect.

Leading to the Mayor

I took many photos on this purple night but I felt weird trying to take this photo with a couple getting cosy on the steps. You might ask “why didn’t you wait until they were gone?” I tried! I went around taking loads in the area and an hour later I got back to this spot and they were still there. 

Other then that moment London was kind to me that night.

This is the second photo of this rainbow that I have posted but I think that you can see it more clearly. For the other photo click here.

I had to be very quick in setting up as the rainbow was disappearing in front of my eyes. It had just stopped raining and I was walking to work and quickly pulled out my D700 and done this handheld HDR.

The National Theatre from Waterloo Bridge

This bridge has one of the best views in London. Waterloo Bridge is situated right next to the London Eye and the National Theatre like you see here. To see the view from the other side of the bridge click here.

The National Theatre is always lit up at night. I have many 

photos of this building but they are usually from the riverside walkway that you can see in this photo. In the distance you can see the Oxo Tower and also the Ghurkin on the left.

Close Up of the London Eye

I still havent given up on my HDR timelapse of london. I have collected so many clips now that all I need is to put them all together. This is another frame of one of the timelapse segments. I think I was standing there for 30 minutes so I could capture one full rotation of the London Eye. As you can see one of the capsules looks like it has fallen off in a major accident and landed in the Thames but don’t fret. Each pod is being taken off individually to be cleaned.

A View from Waterloo.

Im not sure that when you are on a photowalk that you are allowed to take a shortcut and go on the tube. I was at the Tower of London taking photos just after the sunset and the light was good. I had an idea of where I wanted to go during the night but this shot was a key one. As the light was still perfect I wanted to get there quickly. I got a tube from Tower Hill to Temple which is about a minute away from Waterloo Bridge where this photo was taken from.

From here you you a good view of three major landmarks. The London Eye, Charing Cross bridge and Parliament.

Ice cold Thames

An August night shouldn’t be this cold! No the Thames is not made from ice here, its just that the long exposure and ice cold blue tones, make you think it is. 

This is a frame from a timelapse that I am still working on, I now have around 20 different clips that I am happy with. All I need now is some music and some good video editing software. Where is a Mac when you need one?

Flare in the eye.

People ask me how long it takes me to process a HDR photo. The typical photo takes around 15-20 mins as I have now got quite quick at it. Sometimes though it can take up to a few hours for an individual photo. This one took me 2 hours to process as Photomatix created alot of clean up issues around the structure of the eye that I had to repair in photoshop.

It didn’t help that I took the photo handheld. The tripod police are always snooping around here and I have been stopped countless amount of times. Instead of fighting the battle (which I usually win), I now just do not use a tripod in this little area.