Parliament
A long exposure of the river Thames and Big Ben.
A long exposure of the river Thames and Big Ben.
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May, 2017Views
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Awards
Contest Finalist in London Photo Contest
Peer Award
Superb Composition
Top Choice
Outstanding Creativity
Absolute Masterpiece
Magnificent Capture
All Star
Superior Skill
Virtuoso
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was made on the South Bank of the rive Thames in London, next to Westminster Bridge on a very warm summers dayTime
I'd had this image in my mind for some time and after a lot of planning and a very early start I finally got to this location just after 12 midday. You can see the clock face of Big Ben telling us that its 1240 (ish) in the afternoon.Lighting
I wanted the long exposure and it was a relatively still day and lots of strong midday sun meant that I had to be quite extreme with the filtering at about 14 stops.Equipment
I used a Canon EOS 70D, Manfrotto tripod and geared head, Canon EF 17-40 lens and Lee Filters Big Stopper and a ND1.2 (4 stop). Cable shutter release.Inspiration
I love long exposure photography, in particular trying to portray the passing of time and movement in a single frame. The classic architecture of Parliament and Westminster Bridge off set by the fast flowing river Thames really gave me all the inspiration i needed for an early start on the longest day of the year.Editing
I try really hard to get the image right in camera and so really the only processing done to this image was the conversion to black and white. I used NIK Silver Effex Pro to do the conversion and used the Neutral filter.In my camera bag
I'm a bit of a control freak and so take just about all the kit I have... Canon 5D Mk3 and Eos 70D bodies, Canon EFS 10 - 22, EF 24 - 105, Lee big stopper, 1.2 ND set of Lee ND grads and a Firecrest 16 stop filter and a whole bucket load of memory cards and batteries.Feedback
So the secret to success with long exposures is taking the time to set your kit up properly. My workflow if you like is to set the camera to Aperture priority initially with the lens in autofocus. Grab a test shot, set the lens back to manual focus, put the filters in place, switch the programme to bulb and away you go... for particularly long exposures I use an iPhone app called long time to calculate the length of exposure i need, but the more you do of these, you get a feeling for what is about the right exposure... Hope that helps.
