A Travel Photography Tips & Tricks Series Post
Equipment: EOS 5D Mark III EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
EXIF: 25mm f/10 1/400sec ISO 100
Travel Photography – Essence of a City
This shot appeared as my ‘Gold Shot’ in my article on ‘Working the Scene’ (an article on Street photography) in ‘Learning’ section of Smart Photography in their October 2012 Issue.
Summing up London
I had an image of London that was mainly based on Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Shakespeare’s plays, Charles Dickens’ novels, PG Wodehouse’s humour and some 20th Century Fox movies. Additionally, even in the Eastman Color and Technicolor Bollywood movies I saw in the childhood, the Films Division documentaries shown then were mostly in B&W, and were mostly about London. So, even before my visit to London, I was determined to capture the colours of the city in B&W.
To know when to visit London, read ‘A Good Time to Visit London? Now’ and to see more of London in B&W, click ‘Colours of London in Black & White’.
One evening, while on Westminster Bridge, I sensed that I could have a shot that could sum up London in its entirety. To me, this location offered it all. It had diverse people walking by; Big Ben was the backdrop; it had period lamp post depicting the history and heritage of London; the skies were cloudy with a dodgy sun – all of it, typically London. To top it, the shadows and the road markings were providing excellent leading lines to get viewers’ eye straight to the subject!
I was shooting against the light (a massive dynamic range challenge). And I wanted a greater depth of field to get people and the backdrop in sharp focus.
So, I narrowed the aperture to f/10. I exposed with a clear eye on recovering dynamic range extremes of bright and dark areas in post-processing. Here is the result of that effort.
