London at Night

A few years ago, just after I had bought my camera, I went out in London on a lovely freezing night to try it out.  The Thames is a really good place to get night time pictures because of the all the reflections, and it isn't full of tourists at night, stopping every 3 yards to take a picture of one another in front of the same backdrop that will be in their previous 30 pictures.  I had forgotten my tripod so had to resort to balancing the camera on walls (hence the slightly askew pictures), ah well.

Here are the results (no editing what so ever):

(Canon 450D 18-55mm f/5.6 1.3sec ISO800)

(Canon 450D 18-55mm f/5.6 1sec ISO800)

(Canon 450D 18-55mm f/5.6 0.6sec ISO800)

(Canon 450D 18-55mm f/5.6 0.6sec ISO800)

Time Stands Still

As part of my girlfriends uni project I had to capture some urban time lapse pictures, a small group of us raced around London trying to find places where we would have enough people to get a good motion blur but with the background not too chaotic to take away from the model.  Eventually we managed to find a few good spots, but just as we were about to take the first shots my camera decided to break, so it was down to the backup to save the day.  One issue we had not thought about was just how bright it still is when it is cloudy, this caused a big problem and prevented us from getting long streaming shots as the aperture would not go high enough on some of the lenses to allow long shutter speeds. But we persisted and below are the results.  

The only post editing I have done is to B&W the picture but leave in the red.

(Canon 400D 17-40mm L f/22 1/3 sec ISO 100)

(Canon 400D 17-40mm L f/22 1/2 sec ISO 100)

(Canon 400D 17-40mm L f/22 1/4 sec ISO 100)

(Canon 400D 17-40mm L f/22 1/2 sec ISO 100)

(Canon 400D 70-200mm L f/32 1/2 sec ISO 100)

Rush Hour

I have always wanted to get a nice time lapse rush hour shot of traffic, but I have always found it a real pain trying to find a good spot for a picture. My first attempt was in the centre of London, it turned out OK, however it was Sunday evening and no matter how hard you pray there is simply no rush hour traffic.

See:

(Canon 450D 18-55mm f/9 2.5sec ISO100)

But despite the severe lack of traffic you can still give the picture a new twist with a bit of post editing:

Giving up on London on a Sunday night I decided a few weeks later to actually go out during rush hour, and the A3 didn't let me down, after fiddling with the aperture and shutter speed for quite some time, along with waiting for the right amount of traffic I managed to capture this:

(Canon 450D 28mm f/5.6 30sec ISO100)

Success.

Sunrise at Richmond Park

Well, despite my body fighting against it, I persuaded myself to get up before 7am on a weekend!!
No I am not crazy, well maybe a little. But I wanted to get some nice sunrise shots, so after checking the weather the night before (which is a must) I awoke to a wonderful clear sky and morning frost. Perfect. After putting on more clothes than the average Eskimo I packed the car and headed off to Richmond Park. Thankfully I was there before sunrise.

After 2 hours of standing in finger numbing coldness I was able to get these shots.

(a bit of post editing has been done but only to enhance the shots)

(photoshop Cutout effect)

(Canon 450D 70-200mm L f/6.3 1/160sec ISO100)

(Canon 450D 28mm f/5 1/50sec ISO100)

(Canon 450D 18-55mm f/5.6 1/50sec ISO100)

(Canon 450D 28mm f/4 1/60sec ISO100 3 pictures stitched together using photoshop)