London by Night

It was the 25th February 2020 and after a busy day attending a conference at Wembley, (unbeknown to us at the time, it was to be our last conference of 2020), and before heading back to the Midlands on the train, we decided to brave the cold blustery night and try our hands at a bit of night photography.

We headed down to the Embankment and straight for the Millennium Bridge, but there was a very biting wind that made shooting long exposures, even with a tripod, pretty difficult. It was quite surprising just how much vibration there was, on the Millenium bridge, considering the medium amount of foot traffic that was using it.

After a few failed attempts, the best of which is shown above, we decided, the vibrations on the bridge were too much, so, it was time to move on. We headed back down to the Embankment to some stable ground and tried our hands at a few long exposure shots of some light trails. We had a lot of fun and found that trucks and buses gave us the best opportunities for some quite cool light trail effects.

We shot a lot of photos of the night trails, but standing in the same place for too long soon took its toll in the cold February evening. We decided it was time to move along to warm up the muscles a little, but we didn't go too far, because it was time to focus our sights on the Millennium Eye and the River Thames...

Taking shots of the Millennium Eye from the Embankment proved to have its own challenges. Thankfully, the Eye itself made a long stop and did not cause any major issues with movement during the long exposures, however, you will notice that the moored boats in the foreground were not quite so well behaved as they moved about on the River Thames. Nonetheless, we got some pretty reasonable shots. We then decided to head for a Cafe to get a hot drink and warm up a bit, before taking the tube to Tower Bridge to finish off our evening before heading home.

When we arrived at Tower Bridge after a short journey on the Tube, the wind was really starting to pick up a bit and it was biting cold to say the least, but we weathered the storm and started with a few shots of the Shard, which just looked amazing against the night sky, before we attempted some shots of light trails across Tower Bridge.

London offered a lot of opportunity for Night Shooting and we took a lot more photos and these are just a small sample of what we shot that night, but suffice it to say, we had a great evening. We were glad to get out of the wind and back on the Tube and head for Euston to catch our trains home, because we were surely feeling that wind on Tower Bridge.

We have promised ourselves, that we will most definitely be going back to London again to capture some more of the London nightlife, but now we will have to wait until we can put Covid-19 firmly behind us, so STAY SAFE and lets hope we see you all on the other side of this pandemic.