Let's play with long exposures!

I found a day when it wasn't raining (not easy, what with all the floods around the rest of England), went into central London, waited for it to get dark, and played around with long shutter speeds/tiny apertures. It was a weird thing to do because 1) the lens I had on my camera isn't exactly brilliant in low light, 2) I didn't bring a tripod with me, and 3) I don't really do long exposures, so there was a hell of a lot of trial and error. There wasn't much I could do to fix point 1, except to turn off vibration reduction and set ISO at the base 100 to reduce drifting and noise. To remedy point 2 I just ended up setting my camera on top of walls, using my lens cap to tilt the camera up or down. This really limited my point of view, but I persevered anyway. Point 3 requires practice, so let's say that these photos are part of that whole "practice" thing.

Hungerford Bridge. I set my camera on top of a concrete wall and pushed the aperture right to the end (f22) which gave me a 20 second shutter. Unfortunately the small aperture highlighted the annoying dust spots under the anti-alias filter (yes, under. Long story!). These were shopped out after. White balance set to daylight to preserve the blue-purple hue. This is probably my favourite picture, I really like the colours and the zig-zaggy pattern cast on the floor from the side lights.

Some kind of Eye in London. I think it's also known as the London Eye? It was lit up red like a big ring of fire for Valentine's Day (even though I took these all on the 13th). I tried my crappy technique of using the smallest aperture to get the longest shutter possible but despite the water looking all smooth and buttery the wheel was blurred out and the shadows were too dark. Those pesky dust spots also remained highly visible. I ended up using f5 with a 2 second shutter for this.

Big Ben Tower and a bunch of buses and taxis. I set my camera down on a really low concrete barrier (visible in the lower right of the frame) and tilted the lens upwards using... a brick! I wasn't able to get the top of the clock tower in frame with my barrier/brick setup, but I do like the light trails from the oncoming traffic. White balance was cooled to get rid of the orangey haze from the street lamps. (f22, 13 secs)

St. James Park. I cut through the park even though it was completely dark, and I liked the red light from the Eye and the white light from the moon shimmering on the lake. I balanced my camera on the narrow hand-rail (making sure the camera was still attached to me!) and took a bunch of long exposures. This one was probably the nicest. I also like the black smudges in the water from the coots that were still floating about. Cooler white balance again to cut through that orange haze in the atmosphere. (f8, 13 secs)

Wellington Arch. I rested my camera on the Royal Artillery Memorial and waited for some cyclists to pass through so I could capture their light trails as well. I like that it looks like the moon is lighting the statue. (f10, 8 secs)


So that was one of my more successful attempts at long exposure photography. A few things I've learned while taking these photos:

• Wrap up warm in the winter nights, especially when you know there are storms on the way.
• Bring a tripod!
• Point-and-shoot tourists will often copy other people with DSLR cameras and take shots from a similar point of view. They may also stand in front of your shot for that photo opportunity...

No big deal really, this was a test shot. And anyway, the ghost tourist looks kind of cool :)

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Google's auto-enhance feature ends up pixelating some of my pictures for some reason. I suppose enhance = create jpeg artifacts. I've turned the feature off but some pics still appear blocky in places. Hopefully I just have to clear my cache.

Hat trio

I guess my previous picture uploading woes have been resolved. I can upload from my computer once again. Fanks, Google!

Taken during last week's Chinese New Year celebrations in London. Despite the fairly decent weather I decided not to go to the main stage like last year, I instead walked around to see what else was going on. I tried to walk through Chinatown just after midday, I say "tried" as it was completely packed with people. I just ended up walking through a bunch of side roads, seeing if anything caught my eye.

These three ladies were the only non-Asian people that I saw who seemed to be into the spirit of the day, and that line of conical hats really stood out in the crowd. I kind of shot from the hip, and was pretty lucky to get the image so straight. Normally when I try to blind shoot the image is crooked, the subject is out of frame or my camera focused on something else completely (happens a lot with my not-very-fast Tamron lens).

I can't really decide whether I like it in black & white or colour. In colour it's still fairly neutral, and you're still drawn to the three ladies who have purple toy dragons.

I like 'em both.

Mobility

Speed demons.

One guy freely whizzing by on his bike, being watched by another guy constrained to an electric scooter due to his bandaged legs. Contrasting situations? Perhaps.


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So I haven't used blogger in a couple of months, and Google go and change the way you insert images. I appear to have lost the ability to directly upload images from my computer in the editor window, and instead have to go into Google Drive, upload my image there and then select that in the editor. Ugh!

Can I still do it the "old" way? If it's still there I can't find it... :/

Bian lian

Also known as the Chinese art of face changing.

I took this at the beginning of the year during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square. I got there a bit late and started off at the back of the audience that gathered for the main stage. The weather was really wet and a lot of people who weren't prepared for the downpour were driven away, so I slowly made my way towards the front of the audience. I eventually ended up at the front of the stage, umbrella in one hand and camera in the other.

This performer was brilliant. It was extremely difficult to see how he managed to change masks so quickly. I've seen a couple of pics online where other performers have been sloppy and are "caught" at the moment where their mask changes, but the transition from one mask to the next on this act were just too smooth and very well hidden, and he was very fast.

I was mostly on shutter priority and burst mode by the evening, taking 3 or 4 shots per press. I bumped up exposure compension by about 1 stop so that I could keep my ISO fairly low, reason being that I only have my Tamron travel lens with a good enough reach and it's not brilliant in low light (I'd also just learned about exposure compensation so this was a bit of a test :D ). I shot in RAW which filled up my cards quickly but helped with retaining details in post-production. My camera also got rained on pretty hard despite me having an umbrella, but it survived the night thanks to my trusty microfibre cloth (pretty lucky for a camera/lens setup that has zero weather sealing).

Some of the other quick change masks he used. I didn't snap them all as I actually wanted to watch him perform:

The man behind the masks.

 

If you know his name, please let me know :)

Ribs

Under the southside of Blackfriars Bridge.

Repeating lines, contrasting light and darkness, would convert nicely into black & white... of course my attention was drawn to this view :)

Under The Shard

Well, almost under The Shard.

I wanted to photograph The Shard from a different angle so I decided to look up for an abstract view, rather than across the river or down the street to take the whole building in (which I've done many-a-time :D ). It was a cloudy day which gave the sky a fairly even tone and as I looked up a plane flew into frame which helped to put the negative space into context (at least I think it does. I could just be sounding arty for the sake of sounding arty. Ha!)

Left Out

The way the girl is gazing off into the distance makes it look like she wasn't included in the trio's game, but she wasn't really. She was just looking towards her mother who was out of frame.

The camera sometimes lies.