Why chasing images?
With the club’s Urban Rhythm competition coming up soon, I had booked a trip to London with Kathryn since I didn’t think I had anything in my collection suitable.
I had done nothing for this round since it was announced in late Summer, so was having a last minute worry.
Train cancelled
We tipped up at Norwich train station at 08:30 on a Saturday morning and while Kathryn went to check the platform of our train, I went and got tea and coffee.
It transpired that the train had been cancelled due to signalling problems at Shenfield, and Greater Anglia’s offer was to go as far as Colchester on the train, bus to Ely, then train to London.
We left the station, got our car off of the nearby car park and parked somewhere nearby to chat and decide what to do.
The train and bus option would probably add another two hours or more onto our journey in and we were booked on a 22:30 back so had no idea if the issue would be resolved later.
We decided to drive and would head to Westfield Shopping Centre in Stratford and tube into London.
Image Intent
I was intending to capture multiple exposure images and maybe even some Pep Ventosa style visuals.
I had packed my Z7 and ultra-wide 14-30 lens alongside my magnetic filters and a mini handheld tripod, and Kathryn brought the Fuji X100.
Images captured
We parked at Westfield as planned and, aside from a 10-15 minute delay en route caused by deer on the carriageway, it was relatively a good run down.
Lunch on the go courtesy of M&S and we made our way to the underground.
As we crossed a bridge from Westfield, I stopped to do some multi-exposure shots of the shoppers walking over the bridge.
Although the above image probably isn’t a competition winner, I quite like it.
We got the tube into London and had a wander round Canary Wharf to start with and tried more multiple exposure shots.
A trip to London for photography always has an underground station somewhere and I grabbed this multi exposure on one of the escalators.
We headed towards South Bank where I was hoping to get a good shot with moving people and tower bridge.
The image below is stacked layers in photoshop but the sky is blown – I haven’t tried to do anymore with it because, on reflection, it didn’t float my boat as I don’t think it meets the theme.
The other aspect was that Kathryn had learnt something I hadn’t pretty quickly was that only two images were sometimes better for multiple exposures with people in the shot.
We then ended the day at Westminster where I had hoped to get a Pep Ventosa style shot of Big Ben and/or Houses of Parliament with moving people.
Once there though, I couldn’t see how to get the composition that you see on Pep’s website (see below).
The best I could get is below.
I did a few shots of the London Eye.
It was a wrap so we decided to head back to Stratford.
Kathryn’s images
Below is a snapshot of some of Kathryn’s images, and I have to admit, I think she got a more impressive set of images than I did.
Reflections on the day
We had a lovely day wandering around trying to capture creative images for the theme.
I took over 550 images although these are almost all the Raw images of the in-camera created JPEG’s.
I was initially disappointed that I didn’t get what I wanted and nothing suitable for the club competition, but I learnt a valuable lesson.
So, what was that lesson? Well, in essence that it’s very challenging trying to force yourself to capture an image within a small time window.
In other words, you can’t force things and just suddenly produce an impressive image. Much better to just get out often, take images and odds are you will have something to show for it.
This lesson could very easily be a positive advert for social photography! 🤔
Onwards and upwards…