London. What a photogenic place.
With so much variety on offer for all photography styles, it’s hard to not be attracted to here as a location to wander around with your camera and capture something, and still leave you wanting to capture more. However, there’s only so many batteries and SD cards one can carry with them whilst they are out and about.
From historic buildings to modern day sky scrapers; from way up high to down by the river; from the hustle and bustle of vibrant market places to the open greenery of the many scenic parks, London has a lot to offer someone who’s looking to work some camera magic. That’s before you even consider the many stylish and eccentric people you come across should that be your style.
With so many places to take a shot, you may be wondering why I’m writing this blog then. Well, one of my biggest frustrations is when I see a cool picture and I check where it was taken, all that is typically used is a generic location tag such as “London, United Kingdom”, meaning that you can’t see the exact location of a certain spot. This leaves me somewhat frustrated. I realise that there is merit in originality but sometimes you want to create something you’ve seen and put your own spin on things.
To help change this, I want to give people an insight into where the pictures are taken, an insight into my thought process for framing the shot and help somewhat with the settings that I used in that location to achieve the picture that comes from it. Of course, there is the small caveat of the post production work that goes into a photograph, which may be something that I work on sharing more in the future too. But it will give people a starting point on finding some locations to help themselves get a foothold in practicing their techniques before making the jump to create their original pieces.
This post will cover a couple of nights out with the camera during one weekend in London, where I just walked around the city and started taking pictures of anything and everything I liked. These were the selection of photographs that I particularly loved and survived the post production cull! With each picture, I’ve tried to give the exact co-ordinates of where the picture was taken to help you that little bit more.
Camera settings: Exposure 1/8s, f/3.5, 18mm, ISO 2500
Location: Millennium Bridge (Google Maps)
This shot was taken as you cross Millennium Bridge from the south side of the River Thames, crouching down to get the perspective. Personally, I loved the illuminated leading lines leading up to St Paul’s Cathedral.
You might be wondering how I managed to not get anyone in it? Well, this was taken at 01:20am… There aren’t many people around and you can get those clean pictures.
The camera settings that I used were a compromise, with the ISO a bit high looking back, as I didn’t have a tripod with me but the noise that came with that was fixed as much as possible in post production. Lesson learnt!
In the future I would have a tripod, up the exposure time and drop the ISO down. That should allow for a cleaner and crisper picture.
Camera settings: Exposure 1/8s, f/3.5, 18mm, ISO 2500
Location: Millbank, near University of The Arts London (Google Maps)
Wandering along the north side of the River Thames, in the Pimlico area, I couldn’t help but notice this nicely framed scene of Vauxhall Bridge and the buildings behind it. Admittedly, this is only a viable shot in spring or summer if you’re wanting the green leaves as the frame. In the autumn, when they turn those lovely shades of orange and brown and I’m sure they will look just as good.
As for the camera settings, I think you know what I’m going to say. You can tell this was early in my photography journey, making these errors but that’s one of the things this blog is for: learning what does and doesn’t work. So I’ll cover what I think I would do if I headed back. First thing would be to take my tripod, decrease the shutter speed for a longer exposure and drop the ISO way down to around the 100-200 mark. That way you would get the detail of the buildings better and not have to rely upon using post production for removing noise thus losing that detail.
Camera settings: Exposure 1/160s, f/9, 18mm, ISO 500
Location: Butler’s Wharf Pier (Google Maps)
This picture sunset idea was set up using the PhotoPills application that I mentioned in my post about finding photography location. I used Tower Bridge as my main focal point with the hope of getting some of the City of London skyscrapers in the background.
This location is very versatile and provides you the ability to change how you frame it, go landscape or portrait and move all along the pier to give you a variety of different angles.
I made sure to lower my ISO this time, learning my lesson from the night before. My main aim was to not over expose the sky to be able to capture the deeper orange of the sunset and use post production to bring out the detail of Tower Bridge by brightening the shadows.
Camera settings: Exposure 1/8s, f/3.5, 20mm, ISO 2500
Location: Through the supports of Millennium Bridge (Google Maps)
This angle was actually one that was pointed out by the person that I was with, who was along for the socialising element. And to be honest, I couldn’t argue with what they pointed out here. I like the how the supporting structure of Millennium Bridge was framing the cityscape of the City of London, along with the lights reflecting off the river.
As discussed before, the ISO was too high on this particular evening. There are threes ways you could do this shot, with me going with the first option:
- The larger aperture size for bringing more into focus the subject of the bridge’s supports.
- A smaller aperture and use of manual focus to bring the detail of the skyline.
- A compromise of the two and try and get both in focus as much as you can with a large aperture and compromise on focus.
Camera settings:
- First picture – Exposure 1/15s, f/7.1, 24mm, ISO 2000
- Second picture – Exposure 1/15s, f/7.1, 18mm, ISO 2000
Location: Coppa Club Tower Bridge (Google Maps)
I really like how these pictures came out! The depth to the left hand picture with the clear separation of foreground and background, managing to get the Shard in fully and get the detail on both felt very rewarding. Along the waterfront of the Thames is always going to be a safe bet but for me, the aesthetic of the Coppa Club and the apartments behind it just seemed to really hit for me. Unexpected but rewarding location.
For this location, I decided to go with a higher ISO and quicker shutter speed than I normally would a night time shot to be able to capture the people more clearly, ensure that it wasn’t too under exposed and avoid blurring as much as possible. If I were to go back, I would maybe play around with dropping the ISO and increase the aperture to reduce noise that little bit more but wouldn’t want to lose too much detail from the lack of focus.
So that wraps things up for these five locations/ideas. I hope you found it helpful and were inspired to go and seek out some new locations or maybe go to the ones that I’ve been to and create your own unique photograph. I intend to be open and honest with the camera settings, which I chose them and the lessons that I’ve learnt from the mistakes that I’ve made such the high ISO in some of them.
If you have any other feedback to that which I gave myself, be sure to drop it in the comments section down below, or even some location inspiration, so that we can all learn together and collective up our photography game.
Like one or two of the photographs featured in this blog post? Well, you can own a digital copy for your own use, whether it be for a laptop background or to create a canvas print for your wall. You have two options: you can email me at quiltycoversblog@gmail.com with which one interests you and I’ll send one over for £5 per print, or you can head over to my Alamy page, where you’ll find all these pictures plus many more. Make sure you bookmark this page as I’m constantly adding new work to it.
Whilst you’re here, be sure to check out my other photography blogs or something a little bit different by clicking one of the many articles featured on this page or navigate yourself around and find yourself something to inspire your next location to travel to, improve your fitness or level up your lifestyle. Of course, to hear about when I publish new blogs, check out my social media links and be sure to follow me so you don’t miss out on new posts, whether this be on blog the next collection of photographs.
