Evening photo shoot in London

On Friday 25th February four club members were joined by three club members of Farnborough Camera Club for an evening photo shoot with Steve Hedges.

Earlier in the afternoon with my street photographer friends we went up into Westminster and joined the myriad of press photographers watching the then small anti-war demonstration taking place.  Then we headed back down to London Bridge station to meet everyone else at Starbucks on Shad Thames.

The photo shoot plan was to wait for the Tower of London to be in the late blue hour before dashing(!) over the bridge for shots up the river. Then once the light had faded making our way into the City for the rest of the evening.

Tower Bridge

While we waited for the perfect time to take the bridge Steve challenged us to take a dynamic image.

This part of the Thames Walk was very busy with tourists and we took advantage of some street photography before we settled down with tripods to wait for the shot that we were there for. Look out for images of a rather off-key trumpet player standing on the wall!

Our line of tripods drew lots of interest from passers by who wanted to know what was so important that we were all there. Was the bridge opening? What was happening? Why are you here?

Before we left we had enough time to take some long exposure images looking up the Thames and across to the Tower of London.

Thames views

To catch the light it was indeed a dash up and then over Tower Bridge to the North side’s observation space. While we were all busy setting up, we noticed that Will Cheung had joined the throng of photographers and sightseers there.

Light trails on Tower Hill

A more relaxed walk took us to a bus stop on Tower Hill opposite the Tower of London to try our hand at light trails. Normally worrying about traffic is the highest priority but at this location we had to cross a cycle lane to get to a narrow strip of pavement by the road. London cyclists do not take prisoners and given that the majority had no lights this part of the evening was definitely the most dangerous!

The Walkie Talkie

On the way to the City we passed a hotel with an electric delivery parked for display. Paul decided to give it the ICM treatment.

Our next stop was at the side of the Walkie Talkie using a wide angle lens to shoot up the side of the building.

In the City around the Lloyds Building

This was our last location for the evening.

We may have been on the public road but still we were visited by a couple of security guards. A quick explanation that we were a group of camera club photographers was enough to satisfy their curiosity.

The evening was a great opportunity to capture images of London and we were all helped by Steve Hedges who gave us lots of advice and where needed helped with camera settings. He has to be one of the very few workshop leaders who can help attendees on their Sony, Fuji, Canon, Olympus and his Nikon brand.

Thank you again Steve Hedges for a great evening of photography.

Ian Hardacre