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I’ve lived in London for about a year and a half now. During that time I’ve strolled around the streets, taking photographs for my City and Guilds photography course and just for myself. But in all that time, and all those photographs, I’ve never once ventured out after dark, or even remotely near sunset for that matter. In fact, I can’t recall ever taking a photograph at night full stop, unless you count the sunrise pictures from Thailand (but that’s another story).

Last night I took the tube into Central London, into the City, probably my favourite part as it’s so quiet once all the workers have gone home. First, I decided to try and photograph the sun setting behind Tower Bridge, but quickly discovered that the sun sets around the corner of the Thames, and that there isn’t a good enough vantage point. As the light faded, I crossed and recrossed the bridge, vainly trying to find a good location. No success.

Instead I made the best decision of the evening by setting up in the grounds of the Tower of London, right by the Thames, and waiting for the bridge lights to come on and darkness to fall. Wow! What a spectacle. I’d seen other people’s photos of Tower Bridge at night, but never in the flesh before. My own image of this much-photographed landmark now adorns my computer’s desktop; I’ll post a couple of images later.

Which brings me onto the image in this particular post. Again, another London landmark that is well-photographed, but one that probably every photographer should have in their collection. Lloyds of London is one of those buildings that you either love or hate, but at night it gains an almost ethereal quality as it is lit up using white, purple and green lights. I only took a couple of photos, as it was late and proper black darkness had fallen (apparently not the best time to take night photos). This is the best one of the two.

Here are the technical details for anyone who’s still reading. Camera was the Canon EOS 10D. Lens was the Canon 20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 USM. The exposure time was 60 seconds at f/22. Tripod mounted. This is actually the Small JPEG extracted from the RAW file, which is about 500Kb in size. Opened in Photoshop 6, NO adjustment to levels or contrast, resized to 400x267 pixels, then USM applied at 150% / 0.5 radius / 0 threshold. Chose Save for Web and saved as JPEG - Quality 50 (medium). Final file size is 39Kb.

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