Day tripping in the big smoke

Just days after New Years i received an email at work offering return travel to London and back for £5 each. So that weekend myself and Laura got up early Saturday morning and by car,coach and train went to London.

Although i have visited London numerous times as a teenager and in my early 20's i hadn't ever done much sight seeing, so armed with my trusty Canon, sight seeing was the aim of a long and tiring day.

Here are my favourite images of the day.

 

Ive been wanting to practice street photography for some while. I think it takes real guts to step out in front of someone you don't know and photograph them candidly. From what i read, new starters to the genre tend to use a zoom lens/long focal length in order to stay incognito, this wasn't a choice to me as i only had my kit and 50mm prime lens with me on the day.

In the first and second image i like the motion captured (particularly in the second image) and how people are crossing the image in different directions.

When walking close to the London Eye, there are a lot of street performers, i noticed the performer creating large bubbles and a child jumping to touch them before they burst. As i got close enough to take the third image, the child made his last and not so spectacular attempt.........damn!

Graffiti found on the embankment.

The third image was difficult to expose due to the different lighting sources; daylight and artificial from the overhead lights. I really like the depth of field captured by using an aperture of f/7.1 and the hard lines and angles of the different walls.

Landscape in portrait orientation of the river Thames with St. Pauls Cathedral. I was first drawn to the scene by the detail on the street lamps, i then noticed the river and buildings in the background.

Before we left for the trip i had planned to get this shot of the London Eye. In my mind this has came out better than i expected. i had originally planned for the shot to be the opposite of this but when comparing both images i much preferred this composition. I like the empty space on the left compared to the circular shape of the wheel and the diagonal lines of the cables and support structure.

Thanks for looking.