A Thursday evening trip to London, Holland Park to be precise, resulted in me walking for six miles (eight in total for the day) and taking a few photographs on the route. I had decided to accompany my wife on a visit to London, I would have an hour and a half to wander around and take my pictures while she saw to the reason we had travelled up. Luckily the weather was on my side; it was dry and relatively mild but due to timing of our visit the sun had all but set and Holland Park itself was about to close for the evening. Due to limited time available I decided not to travel far from our destination and try and find some night time architectural shots in the neighbourhood hence the six mile walk.
I have to admit finding pictures in built up areas is quite a challenging for me, I have an engineering background but capturing shape and form in pictures, well........ difficult to say the least.
It was some time until I found a possible picture, then came my next challenge I would have to deploy my tripod, it was already quite dark, and set up the pictures with people walking past and looking at what I am doing. I find it unsettling with reports stuck in my mind around photographers being moved on and asked questions when taking pictures in towns such as London. This does not usually happen in the countryside or on the beech. The first couple of shots I found are rushed and not very good but I carried on, nobody approached me, just some funny looks as people walked past or entered into the buildings.
I was in Royal Crescent when I land my first shot worth keeping, it is a long exposure 20 seconds to enable the addition of some light trails from a passing bus putting the aperture at f20 also give the star lights.
It is not far from Royal Crescent to Shepherds Bush and the Westland Shopping Centre, so I found myself crossing over to look down onto Shepherds Bush Station and after a while managed to get a composition with a train moving out, keeping the shutter to 1/5 second was long enough to give the train some blur to show some movement.
Just around the corner from here is the Westland Centre, it is not possible to take pictures in side the centre as it is private property but sitting outside I took this shot, showing some of the hustle and bustle around this area in the early evening.
It was time I was heading back to meet up with my wife, I also needed a drink so headed back to where we agreed to meet and on the way grab a drink from a local supermarket. I always forget to pack a drink when I am going out, each time when I forget saying next time I will bring one with me, oh well next time.
If you want to see more of my photographs visit website clivewphotography.co.uk. Thank you.