Urban Visitor

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Seagulls penetrate to the heart of London, reminding the viewer that the Thames, so wide and placid and dirty, is in fact a tidal river and that the arm of the sea known as the Thames Estuary is not very far to the east. This bird posed for a telephoto portrait on a (fascinatingly textured) rotted wharf piling on the river frontage near the Tower of London, with the old cruiser HMS Belfast framed as the background, in November, 2007. Sharpened and colour- and contrast-balanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

River Cruising in London

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The Greenwich Reach lends itself to panoramic imagery wonderfully. This shot was cropped from a standard frame, taken in November, 2007, from the shores of the Thames between the Royal College of Music and the Cutty Sark's drydock. The sleek, futuristic Thames Clippers are a usual sight, the tour boats plying up and down this famous, historic river through the heart of one of the world's greatest cities. Technically, composition was the object here: I framed the city and waited for the boat to cruise into just the right place before releasing the shutter. The picture was enhanced in the usual way, sharpened and contrast-balanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

The Millenium Dome

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London's Millennium Dome was built as an exhibition pavilion to mark the change of century, on a reclaimed industrial site in Greenwich. It was a controversial project seen as a money-pit by many. Open during the year 2000 with millennium-related exhibitions, it fell into disuse and has subsequently been revitalised as part of "The O2" entertainment district. I took this shot at high telephoto at the beginning of November, 2007, as my plane was circling London waiting for landing permission. The softness of the image is due to the acute angle through the window, and the colour, contrast and sharpness were all adjusted to maximise the result. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Greenwich Reach

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Supercities of the future are a reality today: one look at Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles or London confirms that. This is the latter, a long telephoto shot over the river seen from the Royal Observatory on the hill at Greenwich in November 2007, a place from which, in one glance the eye can scan from the Millenium Dome, over Christopher Wren's hospital buildings begun before 1700, to the new organic tower Londeners christened "The Pickle" for its oblate shape. How many cranes can you count? It's always a game, counting tower cranes on the skyline: London will be a nice town if they ever get it finished. Note the "Thames Clipper" at a landing stage on the river.

The image was sharpened and colour-enhanced, and contrast was brought up somewhat, but the most interesting digital modification was rotation. The frame when taken was off-true, the horizon line was down on the left (a symptom of pressing a shutter release on the right of the camera and most often found in either reflex shooting or subject matter whose outline biases the brain's orientation system to its shape, rather than to what's perpendicular. The arc of the river had such an effect.) It was corrected using Irfanview, a very powerful (free) image manipulation program which includes an incremental rotation routine allowing fractions of a degree. I rotated the image one degree to square up the edges of towers to the vertical. This resulted in a matted area, a series of wedges at the edges of the frame where the image has shrunk slightly within its own boundaries to accommodate the rotation without area loss. I cropped inside these wedges, then proceeded as normal. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. Image by Mike.

Echoes of Battles Past

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History comes in many forms. This is the old British cruiser HMS Belfast, moored on the Thames and billed as "London's floating naval museum." She was commissioned in 1939, fought through the Second World War, served in Korea, was decomissioned in 1963 and, after a preservation campaign, was saved from the cutting torch and became a museum in 1971. Now seventy years old, she represents not just naval history or a symbol of national pride, but a tangible link with the past as surely as the Tower of London which stands opposite. Together they are overlooked by futuristic organic architecture, and passed by sleek 'Thames Clipper' tour boats, linking the past with the present and the promise of a future in which both will be remembered. This was one of a batch of images framing the ship from both sides of the river and in company with a variety of backgrounds, taken in the later afternoon light on a Sunday in November, 2007, and the camera did a fine job of extracting the mid-tones from the ship while preserving the luminosity of the evening sky. The image was subtly enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

The Bellot Memorial

It's an amazing contrast, an Egyptian obelisk whose native environment is the heat and dust of the Middle East, or at best the green vales of the Nile, yet here it is framed by the deciduous leaves of an English autumn, in fact winter. This obelisk stands on the banks of the Thames in the grounds of the Royal College of Music (which inhabits the buildings erected at the end of the 16th century as the Seamen's Hospital). It's not an original brought from Egypt, this one was built in the 1850s as a commemoration of a young French adventurer, Joseph Rene Bellot, who died in 1853on an expedition searching for the missing ships of Sir John Franklin in the Canadian Arctic. Thus it's extremely fitting that it was built at Maritime Greenwich, a stone's throw from where the Cutty Sark has lain since 1950. The image was taken at high telephoto from outside the boundary railings, the framing excluding buildings and the endless London skyline, and the colour, contrast and focus were tweaked for publication. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic; November, 2007. Image by Mike.

Grace, in Greened Bronze

A million photographers must have recorded this statue since it was unveiled in 1973. It's a fountain on the banks of the Thames, maybe fifty metres east of the north end of Tower Bridge. It's at least double-lifesize, maybe more, a near-realistic portrayal of a sea nymph in weightless play with a dolphin, a beautiful piece reflecting England's historic affinity with the sea. The lighting conditions were very difficult, as the early December sun was sinking fast behind the high-rises of London on that Sunday afternoon in 2007. I could play the sun for all it was worth and go for lens-flare, or de-emphasise the sun and try for some sort of dramatic backlighting. I shot many frames all around this fountain but somehow the severe silhouetting of both the statue and Tower Bridge itself has always struck me as the most dramatic. I hesitate to gamma-correct the image or enhance it any further: this is one of those cases when it really did look just like that on the day! Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Photo by Mike, 2007.

Evening on the Thames

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The famous Tower Bridge in London, taken from a vantage on the riverside outside the Tower of London, close by the Watergate. November 2007, late afternoon, with a lowering sun; part of an extensive shoot along the Tower waterfront. 5mp resolution, using Fuji FinePix S5600 on full automatic function. The camera's range of response is amazing, especially for older-generation technology. Photo by Mike.