My annual pilgrimage to London and a reminder why I stay away

Every now and then I have a bright idea. Sat wondering what to shoot next, I realised that the Canary Wharf Winter Lights Festival was on again. So I thought, great, that's Saturday's road trip taken care of. We jumped in the car with bright ideas about what we want to shoot and the different places we should probably visit but I crashed in to this thing called over-optimism!

We set off to Canary Wharf for the 2 hour plus journey and arrived with no hassle. It's only when we arrived at Canary Wharf did the hassle begin. We jumped on the London Underground, paying for tickets and not knowing if we'd bought the correct ones and headed on to Tower Bridge in the centre of London.

We wandered around looking for shots to take but had to battle the crowds. Literally thousands of people milling around and at every stairway and bottleneck there were queues of tourists. Not my kind of thing at all.

The Tower Bridge Cliche Shot

Once the blue hour started before dark we headed on to Tower Bridge and shot traffic trails patiently waiting for double decker buses to pass by. It seems to me that every little YouTuber and Instagrammer has this image but I do like a nice traffic trail.

I shot many versions pointing in all directions but this one with some colour grading looked good to me:

Tower Bridge Blue

I like to travel light in these circumstances and it was at this point I realised maybe taking a 14mm lens was a bad idea. Way too wide maybe so I included a choppy looking River Thames.

St.Paul's Cathedral

After another ride on the London Underground, we arrived at St.Paul's Cathedral. I struck up a conversation with two German ladies whilst waiting for them to move out of my way for this shot. It seems they were in London for the weekend only and were trying to cram in as much photography as they could. We exchanged Instagram accounts and they trotted off to their hotels looking like they needed a rest not a holiday!

The Shard

Almost next to Tower Bridge is The Tower of London with the Shard poking over the top. I shot this with an iPhone 15 Pro hand held with the grainy noise. These fangled phones still aren't quite there yet!

Skyline with an iPhone

I promised myself to revisit with a longer focal length on my "proper" camera rather than an iPhone!

I'm a sucker for glass architecture

In the area near to St.Paul's Cathedral is a small shopping mall with angles and curves everywhere. Even better, this is just about the only place I know in London indoors where security guards actually leave you alone! Normally in a place like this, a foreign chap with a high viz vest and an official looking badge tells us we can't shoot here. Not in this place....

Scale

I like to include people in my shots where I can to show the sense of scale. Unfortunately at this time of night there wasn't too many people around to shoot!

St.Paul's gold and moody

I didn't get too many shots on the road trip due to having walked over 5 miles by this point. It was a struggle getting back to the car with blisters on my feet and cold knees that weren't co-operating. We headed back to Canary Wharf on a sardine packed tube. On arrival, Canary Wharf looked ridiculously busy with thousands of people all over the place queuing to see the Winter Lights. It was at this point we realised trying to shoot said lights would be difficult if not impossible. Cue a two hours plus drive in the middle of the night with the resolution never to return to Canary Wharf again!

About me:
I usually specialise in shooting lightpainting images but occasionally dabble in urbex, landscape and artistic model photography. I'm always on the lookout for someone to collaborate with; the social side of photography is always good!

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