So a couple of years ago I wandered around London with a few friends on an all night photo shoot.  A small group (read: 3) of us decided to go again this year and work our way in reverse of the 2011 route, starting at Buckingham Palace.

I spent way too much time trying to force an image that wasn’t happening here and ended up with a whole bunch of similar shots that were all varying degrees of rubbish.  Even the ‘group photo’, which I normally really enjoy taking turned out bland and poorly lit.

From there, we headed down the Strand stopping at the Royal Courts for a few images.  I don’t know why, but it seemed like the only thing I could think of to shoot was blurry traffic.  I have about 30 images that all look basically like this:

And if that wasn’t enough, we moved on to St. Paul’s and I took even more.  To be fair, I quite like this one so I suppose it wasn’t a total waste of my time.

We popped up to the roof terrace at One New Change to get a few shots of the city but it was already too dark (black/orange skies) and security came round to tell us it was closed and we had to leave.  However, if you haven’t been up there it’s highly recommended as a nice view of St. Paul’s and the city.  Just find the lifts in the middle of the shopping center and head up to the 6th floor.  It’s open to the public so you don’t need to feel like you’re trespassing.  We were told that it closes at midnight during the summer, not sure about winter time.

I’m not sure why, but we then headed off to the Gherkin and Leadenhall Market.  I think it was because Neal’s friend hadn’t shot there before.  I feel like I’ve had my fill of the area and it’s difficult to shoot in the dead of night, so I just wasted some time while they were doing their shots.

We wandered around aimlessly and through some rather dodgy parts of East London before the sky started to lighten up and we made our way to Tower Bridge.  I can never tire of photographing that landmark, but I was feeling really off that night and couldn’t take a decent photo to save my life.

I think the fact that I haven’t done much in the way of photography over the past 6-8 months is really starting to show, both in my creativity and technical know-how.  I’ve just spent the past 20 minutes comparing this years photos to those of 2 years ago, and I have to say the ones from 2011 are much higher quality and that makes me a little bit depressed.

I’m hoping that now that our house renovations are complete (Yay!) I’ll have some free time on the weekends to enjoy the last stretch of summer and get out there for a few photo shoots.

There are a few more images in the gallery.

I decided that while I had Ian’s 300mm lens I’d make a trip back to Tower Bridge and get some ‘close up’ shots.  It being such a long focal length I figured that my best vantage point would be from neighbouring (and very dull in comparison) London Bridge.  As it turns out, London Bridge isn’t far enough away with such a long lens so there were quite a few partial images but it was nice to get a slightly different vantage point.

I have to say I’m not a big fan of the buildings going up behind Tower Bridge, they certainly don’t add to the view.  Progress I guess?

One of the partial views of the towers and some sunset glowing clouds.  If you look closely at the cloud line you’ll see an airplane, something Ian’s lenses can’t help but photograph.

I did a few panoramas as well, but nothing extrordinary I’m afraid.  All in all it was a rather disappointing outing, but I did come away with this bit of knowledge: if you’re ever planning on shooting Tower Bridge from London Bridge, a 70-200mm lens is just about perfect.

Couple more images in the gallery.

With Tower Bridge all dressed up for the Olympics I had to go back and get some evening shots of the new lights.  Not much to discuss, so on with the photos!

At a quarter to ten in the evening they put on a bit of a light show.  It basically consisted of of flashing the towers with multiple combinations of coloured lights.  Given the spirit of the Olympics I thought the Red, White & Blue theme worked quite well.

The gallery is here, but the images I’ve posted here comprise the entirety of the collection.  No need to explore any further!

With time dwindling down on mama’s visit, she wanted one more outing to get a few photos at the iconic Tower Bridge, resplendent with it’s temporary Olympic rings.  Looking through the archives of this site, I think it’s safe to say that Tower Bridge is my favourite of all of the London landmarks.  Possibly because I used to live by it and got to see it every day, but I really think it’s something special.  It doesn’t take much to convince me to head down there are take a few photos of it.

Any day along the south bank is going to be a busy day, but what with the nice weather and the influx of Olympic tourists the crowds were boarding on excessive.  We spent a fair bit of time waiting around for spots to clear up so we could get some decent images.  After a lot of fruitless patience I remembered that when the tide is out  there’s a nice, secret little spot that few tourists go that would be ideal for our photos.

The above shot was taken at our secret shore and provided a much nicer vantage point for the bridge.  There were a few other folks who had found their way down here, but everyone was pretty good about taking turns and staying out of each others  way.

More photos of Danni, mama & Tower Bridge in the gallery.

So, this year was my second attempt (first attempt here) at an all night photo shoot throughout the streets of London.  The plan was to all meet up on one of the shortest nights of the year, stay up all night and end up at Westminster bridge to try and recreate a few of the iconic images seen in the opening sequences of the film 28 Days Later.

We all met up around 7:30 (baring a few stragglers) on the south side of Tower Bridge for a few sunset photo opportunities.  As I have about 200 images of Tower Bridge already, I took a couple of snaps and then spent most of my time chatting with the other folks.

After everyone arrived, I set up a couple of lights and made everyone pose for a big group photo before we started our slow trek to Westminster.

The POTN Gang
L to R: Matt, Steve, Brett, Paul, Neal, Angus, Bonnie, Scott, Me

Our walk took us from Tower Bridge to Westminster Bridge via the Gherkin, Bank, St. Pauls, Smithfields and Holburn before finally catching a bus from the Strand for our final leg of the journey.  We were running short on time to catch sunrise at Westminster, so we’ll plan a bit better next year I think.

While the sunrise we had wasn’t brilliant, it did provide some terrific light at Westminster which enabled me to get the photo I’d had in my head for a few days prior to the outing.

We were expecting the area to be completely quiet, but London being the city is it there was still a fair amount of traffic and quite a few people heading home from a long night out at 4:30 in the morning.  Still, there were few enough people that we got the shots we wanted without having to photoshop anyone out of the scene.

Definitely a great night out and worth the red bull shakes I had the following day.

As always, there are a few more shots in the gallery.