Recommended Photography Locations in Camden Market, London

As I’ve shown in previous blogs, London is full of locations for you to wander around with a camera and collective a wide array of shots. (If you’ve not seen these articles, you’ll find them here and here). Camden Town is one of those locations in itself that can give you a variety of cool photographs, capturing the eclectic mixture of modern artwork, people and old school architecture. Such a cool place to explore that I believe even Taylor Swift enjoys a wander around.

Not only that though, you have the ability to spend the whole day there as there are plenty of places to feed and water yourself so why not make a day of it?

Anyway, here are some of my favourite shots that I managed to capture whilst in Camden Market, giving you the exact location of where they were took from and of course, I’m going to give you the low down on what I put into my camera settings to achieve them.

There’s so much for you to gain from this, why wouldn’t you read on? Let’s get straight to it!

Camera settings: Exposure 1/250s, f/5, 18mm, ISO 400

Location: Outside Manga Maze & Metal Music (Google Maps)

Here’s a perfect example of the old school architecture contrasting with the bright artwork that you can see around the market. It’s one of those frames that the more I look at it, the nicer the picture gets with, especially as you notice all the various details from the plants on the left to the van on the right.

Unfortunately, it was an overcast day and not a lot to achieve from getting details from the cloud so I concentrated on getting the detail of the brickwork as much as possible without over exposing the sky and drowning out the shot.

Camera settings: Exposure 1/320s, f/4.5, 18mm, ISO 400

Location: Outside Dr. Martens (Google Maps)

This is another perfect example of being able to capture the architectural beauty of the older buildings and gives you plenty of options for capturing people under the bridge should you want to. One of the things I like about the composition of this picture actually is how the bridge frames it all from above.

Why did I decide on the setting that I did for here? The quicker shutter speed to ensure there’s no blur of the people and no saturation from the sky. This meant a wider aperture to ensure that enough light is captured for the whole shot and whole frame. Then my standard street photography ISO of 400.

Camera settings: Exposure 1/320s, f/8, 18mm, ISO 400

Location: West Yard, Camden Lock Market (Google Maps)

The West Yard at Camden Market is such a mixture of places to eat, giving you a variety of colours alongside the flavours to capture with you lens. There was something that just drew me to the leading lines of this canal boat that I couldn’t resist and the result of it can’t be argued with. I think it truly shows the character of the location.

Where as in other pictures I have been in covered areas or between buildings thus aperture has had to be wider, this one needed a smaller one as I was fully out in the open. It looks like it worked out for me though with me being able to details of not only the sky but the contrasting darker foreground.

Camera settings:

Left picture: Exposure 1/100s, f/13, 36mm, ISO 400
Right picture: Exposure 1/100s, f/5.6, 55mm, ISO 400

Location:

Left picture: Outside London Souvenirs Shop (Google Maps)
Right picture: Outside of Plonk Crazy Golf (Google Maps)

This is a perfect example of the sorts of scenes that can capture at Camden Market. not only do you have the eclectic mix of shops that situate themselves in this alleyway, the compact nature brings together a wide array of people bringing an ever unique composition. The umbrellas lining the above the alleyway only provides a nice and warm hue to the shot, providing plenty of colour to frame the picture with.

For both of the shots taken, the exposure time was up higher than ideal to ensure that I got enough light into the picture with the ISO staying low to make sure I can keep the detail and not have to remove noise. It was tough to over expose the sky lights when trying to get enough brightness on the street level. The other thing to consider was blur. I didn’t want too long an exposure time or else I’d end up with plenty of blur from the crowd moving around.

The left hand picture had such a small aperture as I was shooting directly into the light so it was a case of not over exposing the sky and then brighten the sign in post production. The picture on the right hand side firstly would have been more ideally taken with a 200mm lens to really emphasise that depth of field and bring more of the shot into focus. The aperture size was the widest I could have gone for with the further focal length available on my lens.

Camera settings:

Bottom left picture: Exposure 1/320s, f/7.1, ISO 400
All other pictures: Exposure 1/320s, f/5.6, ISO 400

Location: Camden High Street (Google Maps)

Camden High Street is a piece of art itself. There’s a variety of shops and an eclectic mix of people wandering the streets making it the perfect place for you to embrace street photography. A personal highlight for me and something that I really wanted to capture with my camera were the shops’ artwork, each personalised for the shop that it sits above. These are just a few of my favourites but I wish I had more to stop and take in more.

Camera settings for these pictures are my standard daytime street photography settings. ISO 400 allows me to be able to have flexibility on aperture and exposure time without bringing in noise. As I was taking a still objects, the shutter speed and aperture were to get the best balance of light.

If there are any pictures in this blog that you liked the look of and would like to purchase it for your own personal use, be it a wall print or otherwise, then be sure to head over to my Alamy portfolio where you will be able to view them, along with . If what you’re looking for isn’t on there, then send me an email quiltycoversblog@gmail.com and I’ll be able to sort this out for you as not all photographs make it there.

Like the content of this photography blog? Then be sure to check out my other photography blogs, letting you know how I go about finding my photography locations and giving tips and tricks for other locations that I visit, providing inside thoughts on how to capture the shot you’ll want.

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