Into The Void | Weekly Photo #117
Boy, do I miss spending time in London. I’ve visited a handful of times in the last few months but nowhere near as much as I’d like. This is predominantly due to the various lockdowns and restrictions we’ve all been subject to but more recently, while I’ve had the freedom to venture into the city, I’ve chosen to focus my photography (excuse the pun!) on woodland and the natural landscape.
At first, this was due to necessity as I either needed to find something else to take photos of or I stopped altogether until this whole saga has blown over, but I’ve since grown increasingly fond of this new subject and although I’m not going to stop photographing London in the long term, I feel I still have lots more to do and improve upon while out taking photos in the woodland or along the Sussex coast.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF10-24mm | 10mm | 1/35th Second | f/10 | ISO200
This is a photo of London I’d been after for a while. I wanted to take a look up-photo of the high-rise buildings in the city on a foggy day and I actually came really close to getting it when I took this picture here back in March 2020. Unfortunately, on that day I wasn’t quick enough and the fog lifted as I was making my way into the city, but later the same year, it all came together.
After arriving in a foggy London at sunrise (although the sun was nowhere to be seen), I started off on London Bridge. I knew time was against me, but I just couldn’t resist spending a few minutes taking some atmospheric photos along the River Thames before heading into the city to capture that picture I had been hunting down for so long. You can see some of those photos in the blog post I’ve shared below.
Once on location and surrounded by these architectural giants, it was time to hastily set up the camera before the fog started to lift even further. I spread the tripod as low to the ground as possible and mounted my Fujifilm XT2 camera with a wide-angle 10-24mm lens. By getting as low as I could along with using the wide-angle lens, I could include as much of the surrounding buildings as possible, elongating those lines that draw the attention from the corners, all the way up and into the misty void above. I rotated the camera around, purposely placing the buildings into the corners which provided a much better composition to my eye.
With the camera so close to the ground, pointing directly up, even with an articulated screen, I had to get down low, almost laying down next to the camera to see what I was photographing. This is where having the Fujifilm X-series comes into its own as all of the main camera controls can be accessed through the analogue dials rather than digging through menus so even in awkward positions like this, I could still adjust my settings with relative ease. I must have looked a sight to the early commuters passing by as they headed into the surrounding offices but sometimes you’ve just got to ignore the strange looks when the photo you’ve been chasing for so long is on the cards.
I like the contrast offered by the darker foreground set against the bright foggy sky and along with the almost monochromatic look of the photo, it has a bit of a high key black and white feel to it which I think works quite well. My only real complaint (which I could do very little about) is the empty space up in the top left. I would have liked that building to be taller to help fill the space and add balance, but you can’t win them all!
As I mentioned above, I took a handful of photos while out in London on that foggy November morning and I shared more of them in this “on location” blog post I wrote below.
Whilst I’m still almost exclusively working from home, I suspect I will continue exploring and photographing the natural landscape but I suspect it won’t be long before I am needed back in the London office more regularly and I think it’s then that I will be back photographing the city more often, hopefully bringing with me some of the new skills and techniques I’ve picked up during this extended hiatus.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.