Sunday 3 October 2010

A DAY IN THE SMOKE - LONDON PHOTOGRAPHY

"After hitting a small child and her mother with my tripod, I came to conclusion that London isn't made for a photographer".

The Tube/Underground/Subway

The empty train stopped at Oxford Circus. There, every working man and woman in London clambered onto the train shoving as many people as possible. Within the waves of pushes, I managed to turn around and inadvertently hit both the mother and her once beautiful daughter in the face with the head of my tripod. I felt terrible at first and apologised profusely, but was shortly comforted by the extended space I gained as fellow Tube go-ers backed away not wanting their eyes to be impaled by a Manfrotto Swivel Head Tripod.

After an uncomfortable few stops for both the inflicted and myself I headed towards Embankment to shoot The Houses of Parliament. You may think this as a straight forward shot, but the "Tripod Police" arrive as soon as your tripod is mounted up, telling you to kindly bugger off, as they claim it can be used as a weapon of some sort? In the past I have ridiculed them at such an idea but after today's Tube incident I thought it was fairly close to the mark.

So...I set-up under a bridge out of the way of the tripod police and positioned myself so the entrance of the tunnel would frame The Houses of Parliament in the background. After some waiting for a clean picture without a gormless tourist in the photograph, I decided to use them to my advantage. I waited until some cyclists came into my picture and used a 1/2 second shutter speed to give the photograph some movement.





St. Pauls and the Millennium bridge

It had rained all day. One speck of rain on the lens can ruin an entire photograph. I set up on the "beach" of the Thames and with a little help from my friend James Hodgson and a rusty, diseased ridden umbrella found in the "surf" we managed to get a rain-free image.






Two more images of the day




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