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.

There are very few landmarks in London that I don’t already have a proverbial ‘butt load’ of photos of, but the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey definitely fall into that category.  To be fair, I have quite a few shots of the HoP but most of them are from across the river in your standard tourist visiting the Thames style.  I wanted something different.

I met up with Dennis shortly after work and we wasted no time setting up and peppering Big Ben’s clock tower with shots.  Generally, shooting things with a tilt-shift lens gives me a unique twist on some oft-photographed subjects, but it’s not always a guarantee.  That being said, I was pretty happy with the set of photos I ended up with.

From there it was on to the Abbey for a few more shots while the rest of the days light faded.  This church will be the location for the upcoming royal wedding in April, so it was a fairly topical spot to shoot.  I’m certainly not going to try to come down here and get a few photos on the day, as organizers are expecting several hundred thousand people to turn up and try to catch a glimpse.  I suspect I’ll stay home and watch it on TV…

Before calling it a night and heading to the nearest pub, we wandered past the south end of Westminster Palace for a few more shots of the building as well as the required portrait shots.

Check out my sweet camera (and note the camera envy on my face)

There are a few more photos of our excursion here.

I think I’m going to have to create an album just for shots of London, as my new project has me out quite often shooting scenes within the city. This past Saturday had me out with Lord Crawley again shooting the oft-photographed south bank including Westminster, the eye and even the Banksy Tunnel.

I’ve shot the tunnel in the past, but this time I dragged along some lighting kit to do a portrait shot or two.  Lee was kind enough to be my model for the evening, which made things much easier!

We also managed to spin a couple of orbs on the south bank, much to the surprise of the passersby out for a quiet stroll.  At one point I was worried about collecting tips as a street performer while I stood on a raised dais whirling my LED’s around.  Still, I think it was worth it and I wouldn’t have said no to a few quids worth of coins.

Sunday was spent with my friend Su Kim doing some portrait head shots for her London relocations website.  It was fun to do something in a psudo-professional capacity and getting a free, yummy lunch out of the deal just made my day!  We’re still in the selection process, but there should be one or two processed photos online shortly.  If not here than at the very least on my 365 site as I didn’t take any other photos that day.

A few more shots from the weekend are available in the gallery.