Category Archives: Night
Ready to Fly
A friend and I have been discussing the possibility of taking a skydiving holiday next year to get a week of sun, sights and a little bit of craziness from jumping out of planes. If anyone has taken one of these trips somewhere in Europe, please drop me a note with details of who you used to arrange it with. I’ve never skydived before and don’t wish to simply do a static line jump, so any trip that offers a tandem followed by supervised jumping would be ideal. Thanks.
One Giant Leap
The other night I went to the Science museum in London for an evening of alcohol and canapés. I didn’t take many photos, but one of the ones I did take was of this spacesuit using a speedlite at the right hand side and which you can see the flash of reflected in the helmet.
I added an image of the moon that I took on Christmas day a few years ago and processed using the PhotoTools package by OnOneSoftware to get this space walk shot.
It’s certainly something a little different to my usual, but as I’m starting to say that a lot just now that hopefully means I’m moving away from a ‘usual’ style of shot.
Darkness Falls
The nights are closing in earlier and earlier just now as we make our rapid descent into winter. Sure, I get to see a few less sunsets and golden hours while I’m sat behind a desk working, but at least it means I can start doing a little urbex at a reasonable time and not have to wait until it’s very late before we head up somewhere under the cover of darkness. Hopefully the mist that stopped play on Saturday night doesn’t last too long…there’s no point going up 30 storeys to find you can’t see a thing.
I hope everyone had a nice weekend, do anything nice?
Millennium in Monotone
I took and processed this shot several months ago, but was never really happy with it, but couldn’t put my finger on why. Looking back at it this morning I thought it was alright, actually.
Opinions change for a variety of reasons on images, and it could be the mood you’re in, coming back from having a break and seeing it afresh, or just that it somehow grows on you over time.
Of course it could also be that I’ve had no time for processing over the past week or so and I was looking back over my previously processed shots when I saw this, immediately thinking ‘that’ll do’.
Hopefully I’ll have time to sit and process this weekend. I hope you have a great time yourself…what are you up to?
Zoom
One of the great things about sitting up high on a crane of rooftop is that you get to watch the world go by below you. Sure, you come for the view of the city, but it’s the buzz generated by those getting on with their lives that makes you feel like you’re watching over the wonderful capital as a guardian; you feel connected to the city, yet detached at the same time – a little like when you’re playing Sims and you know that the characters within it are under your watch, but without the godlike power of being able to remove the doors to their homes so that they die alone after a few days.
I was never any good at the Sims.
Hoochinoo Live
Something slightly different today, as instead of a single image I’m going to post up the ones I took on Saturday night at a gig at the Vibe Bar on Brick Lane. Hoochinoo showcase acts from the UK’s underground alternative hip hop and urban music scene – not my usual cup of tea, but with beer and the chance to break out the new speedlite it’s something I decided to leave the house for.
Well I say that this type of music isn’t my cup of tea, but I don’t see why not as all of the acts were actually really good, and Def D Fires were certainly one of the better, and certainly one of the most energetic, live acts I’ve seen in a while. All in all it was a good night out.
Oh, and in case you were wondering – that is indeed one of my beers in the image above and, no, it did not taste like it looks.
Taken with:
Canon 500d
Canon 50mm 1.8
Samyang 8mm Fisheye
Canon 580EX II Speedlite
BlackRapid RS-4 Strap (yep…another outing with this strap, and yet another eyecup replacement needed)
Processed with PhotoTools 2.6 by OnOne Software
City Hall
Friday again already! This week has been a bit of downtime from the hectic work life of the past few weeks, and though I’m getting a lot done it feels like I’m doing nothing much at all. Evening’s are free once more, and have been used to chill out and catch up on a bit of TV watching…this weekend is likely to be the same.
Here’s a quick shot that I took of City Hall when out on a photowalk last Sunday. It’s an odd shaped building that always reminds me of Alien. For a building that houses the Greater London Authority I’ll let you go ahead and make your own comparisons between the two.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Towering Above
It’s not easy to take a long exposure from the top of a crane when you don’t have a tripod of any sort with you, however on this trip I managed to do so by getting a little creative with my BlackRapid strap which I wrapped around both the camera and the small metal railing that was at the top of the crane in order to hold it steady for the duration required.
By now my readers will not need an introduction to the building which is shown here towering above the rest. I normally take shot of the Shard from the West looking East, so it’s good to be able to get one here which is from the North looking South instead. The bridge you see at the right with the red light running across it is London Bridge.
Scarecrow
Happy Halloween everyone.
Long weekend just passed whereby I now ache all over – I hope you all had a good one and attended a fancy dress party or two for this scary celebration.
The above shot is actually taken from a roof garden on the Southbank. I’m not sure why a garden was there, or why it featured this scarecrow, but when I saw it last month (earlier this month? I forget) I knew it would be a perfect image for the Halloween post. Taken with the nifty-fifty which gave nice depth I feel.
Shard Sunrise
Ladies and Gentlemen – this is my 200th photoblog post on this site. A huge thank you to everyone that has commented, shared and connected with me throughout this year, and who have motivated me to maintain a post and photo every weekday up until now – you guys and gals are awesome!
As this is my 200th post I feel it’s quite special, so I’m sharing an image that I find fitting for the occasion. Does it feature London? Yes. Does it feature the Shard? Yes. Is it taken from up high on an urbex trip? Yes. Does it feature a sunrise? Well, yes it does!
We had come up to this rooftop around 7 hours before this shot was taken; after spending a bit of time taking night shots of London we retreated a couple of floors into this abandoned shell to try and sleep for a few hours on the cold empty floor. I got little sleep to be honest, especially with the knowledge that my own bed which was warm and comfortable was just a 30 minute walk from this location. But we were there for the sunrise, and that meant a late entry and early rise.
The sky was wonderful this bank holiday morning…we were so lucky with it. As I was waiting for the brackets to finish I knew that this shot was going to be the one I would take away from the morning, and so quickly snapped a picture of it with my dodgy iPhone:
I was amazed how the sky was showing the blue hour, the golden sunlight and the red dawn all at the same time, all with the added interest of clouds. Not only this but the buildings all seemed to have their lights on which added to the interest of the scene.
Thanks to everyone who has supported me throughout the last 200 shots, and welcome to those who are visiting me just for today – you’re all welcome and appreciated. Plus it’s Friday…so raise your glasses to the next 200 shots, and to the weekend ahead.
As an aside, and as mentioned on Monday, I haven’t been out with the camera for a few weeks as work has been so busy, and so I’m heading out there on Sunday for a nice photowalk. I’m starting off the day with a little Urbex trip, followed by a photowalk by the Thames and then a ‘do your own thing’ in the evening (I’ll be climbing a building ;o). If you fancy heading out there with me and a few friends then the starting point will be 3pm in Spitalfields market beside the goat statue. I look forward to seeing you there.
View murphyzPhotowalk in a larger map
Dome
There’s nothing new to see here, it’s the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral – a building that I hope you’re not bored of seeing shots of yet as I have plenty more to come, I’m sure.
This shot was taken at the start of this year on a very cold and windy night at the end of January. I was on a 10 or 11 storey rooftop near my flat, a place I found and which I think myself and the two friends I took were the only ones to go up there.
This shot is from around 2 miles away from the dome, a little less as the crow flies.
I was zoomed in to 417mm on the 50-500 lens, the weight of which seemed to help against the wind. I’m on a cropped sensor I’ll let you do the math on the magnification.
I was surprised it came out so well from so far away.
Do You See The Light?
Another shot taken on Monday night’s photowalk…this is one external section of St Paul’s Cathedral showing a window on the right hand side of the building.
I’ve spent so long taking photos of the whole of St Paul’s in the past that it’s nice to actually get up a little closer to it and spot things that I’ve been missing in the past. I can’t say I’ve ever noticed the intricate carvings previously.
This is my Church
One of the shots I had in mind when I arrived at this ruinous burnt out church was to have my hoodie character in various poses around the church which I would then combine into one shot. However, back home when it came to the processing I opted to use just the first shot I took with my back to the camera as this just seemed to work a lot better on the big screen, in this case less is certainly more.
I didn’t do too much to this shot in post process, pretty much just applying the Urban Sickness filter in OnOneSoftware’s PhotoTools and a little bit of perspective cropping. Nice and simple, and quick.
Smoke & Shadows
During our Cornwall trip, John and I attempted to get a sunrise and sunset in on a daily basis, but the weather wasn’t always playing along and towards the end of the trip it seemed to have decided that we had had enough sun and it was time for us to get a little wet. After setting up camp and heading through a forest to the nearest village in order to find food we knew that we had made a mistake not taking torches as it was getting dark, and a trip back would be pretty interesting in a Blair Witch kind of way.
On the edge of this woodland area was an old church, pretty much just the ruins left due to an arson attack in the early 90s. I commented it was odd that all churches seemed to be built in graveyards, but we thought it was a great opportunity to have a little fun, especially as the drizzle had dampened out spirits (and quite literally dampened us).
It just so happened that John had a little steel wool for us to play with, and a new acquisition by way of some smoke pellets which we hadn’t quite found suitable place in London to try out yet. After a few failed attempts at using these I figured that long exposures simply weren’t going to work, so we broke out the flash and mounted this nearby – instantly better results.
Each smoke pellets last around 30 seconds to a minute, and I played around with different poses over this time period. Towards the end of one of the stints I decided to do a Platoon move and drop to my knees, hands raised. Unfortunately I landed on one of the used smoke pellets and my left knee, which is getting in a poor state due to the amount of bruising it receives from various UrbEx trips, suddenly developed a haematoma and was sore as hell. Luckily it was only a small one and the blood within quickly subsided.
For the shot above I combined two exposures; the first with my standing normally as you see in the middle of the shot, and the second of my shadow with hands raised…we are in a church afterall.
Star Wars vs Batman
To celebrate the launch of the Complete Star Wars Saga on BluRay, the iconic BT Tower in London held a launch party and attempted to light the tower up as if it were a lightsabre.
As a lightsabre it failed pretty hard, and as I’m also not a huge Star Wars fan I thought it would be fun to turn this into something more appropriate. The beam of light being thrown out seemed, to me, more like a beacon calling for help than a futuristic laser sword, and so I thought a Batman symbol would be a little more apt for it.
Saying that, I enjoyed the fact they tried to do something new and fun, and of course it gave me a decent photo opportunity.
Friday already! I hope everyone has a great weekend; thanks for all of your comments and retweets this week, appreciated.
Head in the Clouds
I often have my head in the clouds, but not so literally as in this image.
I encourage others to do things only with which they are comfortable with. The majority of people I go on an urbex trip with don’t so much like the edges of tall buildings, or the edging out to somewhere a little more precarious. Others would do things that I wouldn’t feel comfortable with, but if they are happy to do it then so be it. If you’re not comfortable doing it, then don’t – it’s that simple. If you know the risks and are confident in yourself and the situation around you then by all means push yourself that little bit further.
I’ve been in far more dangerous spots that you see here, however, as this image is pretty deceptive. I’m sat on top of some window cleaning apparatus here, and sure it may be 30 storeys up, but the apparatus is firmly on the roof and so I would only fall to the rooftop below me – it will be painful and I may break a bone, but it’s not really a fatal drop, and certainly not as high as the image suggests. By cropping out the rooftop that the camera sits on the illusion of my sitting high above London like a crazy fool is complete.
The Bridge to St Paul’s
Today I am pleased to be sharing some excellent news with you.
St Paul’s Cathedral, who regular readers will know is one of my favourite buildings in London to photograph, recently completed a 15 year, £40m restoration project which aligns with their 300th year anniversary. To celebrate this they held a photo contest for amateur and professional photographers to submit their shots of St Paul’s.
I’m pleased to be able to let you know that one of my shots, Sunny St Paul’s, was included in the top 10 images and will be on digital display in the crypt of the Cathedral during the Oculus: an eye into St Paul’s experience.
But there’s even better news!
Another of my images, St Paul’s – World AIDS Day, was chosen as the overall contest winner!
I’m obviously pleased as punch by this good fortune and my first contest win (out of 3 entered, I think). You can view the competition page and the rest of the winners on the St Paul’s Cathedral website.
Here is my winning image, and the other which is in the top 10 finishers:
St Paul’s – World AIDS Day (winning image) – view original blog post
Sunny St Paul’s – view original blog post
And now back to today’s post. After shooting at the BT Tower on Monday I headed out to do a little bit of early evening and night photography with John (Happy Birthday John!). The light was pretty good by the time we had dinner and walked over the Millennium Bridge to the south side, and I had wanted a new St Paul’s image to go up on the blog along with today’s news – the shots I took from the helicopter on Sunday and the BT Tower on Monday didn’t really have any good, usable ones of the cathedral.
John suggest that I stand on one of the side support structures to try and get a unique shot, which I did indeed try. I then got higher and higher trying to find a better angle until I realised the only way I was going to be happy with the lines in the shot was to actually sit on the four metal rods that are the side support for the bridge (probably not the term the architect would have used on the original plans) and work my camera in between them.
The shots I took came out quite well, and I was pretty happy processing this one in colour, especially as it’s an angle I don’t think I’ve ever seen previously, and when you’re at a location that is so heavily photographer a unique shot is often hard to come by. Recently Vulture Labs has been producing some excellent work, in particular the B&W Toned series of shots, and that inspired me to go for this one in B&W, and I’m glad I did – this is certainly my favourite shot that I’ve taken from this location to date.
A Long Way Up
This shot was taken around 35 flights up on what was a good, but wasted, evening.
The problem with Urbex and high locations in London is that it’s easier to go in under the cover of darkness, but you really want to be up on top to take in a sunset, which means a daylight entry.
The problem with this particular location was a very high and loud fence, four guys with tripods and camera gear, and a plethora of security cameras for both the site and the Metropolitan Police around the location.
So, we got in and we got up. 9 shots later and I see a car far down below me. I study it for a while, and call over a friend to also watch. Then there are 2 security guys who we see inside the grounds – darn, we were spotted getting in – time to find a spot to hideout in.
Then a police car arrives.
Then a second police car arrives.
Then a police van arrives.
Then the dogs start barking.
Game over.
Time to head down the stairs rather than wait for someone to come up. 35 flights of stairs is a long and tiring trip, we don’t really want to piss the cops off too much by making them do it – nor do we want the police dogs to be the ones who come up unleashed.
The police were all very friendly when taking our details – one of them also had to borrow my torch to search my bag; I was pleased to gain a couple of inches in the description I was given, but then displeased to see that I had also gained a couple of pounds and my ‘body type’ was classed as ‘heavy’.
It was very nice to see a new angle from London, but out of the 9 shots taken this was the only really usable one, so it certainly seemed like a slightly wasted journey also.
At Night I Stand Watching
First up, a big thank you to Mike Olbinski who featured me as a guest blogger yesterday as part of his new ‘OneQuestion‘ guest series. It was an honour to be asked and invited, and I’m really looking forward to seeing who else is part of this series. Thanks Mike!
Some of you will recognise this image as I used a cropped version for a recent Microsoft Bing contest – although I didn’t progress to the final stages I don’t mind that as it was nice to get a shot such as this out there. One of the conditions of the contest was not to have the image submitted already posted on social networking sites, and as I usually put my daily photoblog images on Flickr and Tumblr I held back on posting this one here also.
This one is 33 floors up in the heart of London, looking down on the OXO Tower which is hidden by me standing there on the edge. The red lit building over on the left is the National Theatre, with Waterloo Bridge spanning the river Thames beside it. The Millennium Wheel/London Eye and Big Ben are just off the shot on the left. In the distance ahead of me you can see the BT Tower lit up in red and blue. The tripod is extended as far it it would go and is on a block of concrete. I put it on a 10 second timer so that I could get in position at the edge of the building and steady myself against the strong wind.
This trip was an unplanned one, as we had intended on hitting a different, much smaller building, nearby. A workman sat in a truck prevented us from accessing it when we wanted to though, so we decided to try this location which had been locked up for ages, I had been checking in on it since last November, and so we were surprised and delighted to find out we could access it on this night.
The 33 flights of stairs are pretty tiring, and on the way down we found the lift was actually still in working order. With 5 of us crammed in there it was squeaking and creaking all the way down, and as I had to try and get home, sleep for a few hours and then head to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco I was a little worried in case it decided to give in on us.
It didn’t though, luckily, and I walked away after spending a few hours at what’s probably the best location in London.
Peace Pagoda
I was on a photowalk recently with John and thefella and one of the spots suggested was Battersea to take a few shots of the power station and this pagoda. I’ve taken a few shots of it before, but have never been happy with the ones that I’ve taken – and this day was no real exception as I wasn’t too happy with any of the angles I was getting around the pagoda, and for a structure that lends itself well to symmetry there were always trees in the way which ruined that for me aesthetically.
When on a photowalk you move slowly, as you’re generally waiting for someone, and while you wait you set up a little shot further away, and as people are then waiting for you they do the same – so it can be slow progress. I had walked away from the Pagoda in a ‘I’m done here’ kind of way, but as I was stood in this spot I decided to try out a few shots with the 8mm fisheye, which is what was used in the image above. The lamp-post on the left side was heavily curved so I had to straighten that out a bit in post process, and you can see the section at the right leans down to the left a little still.
At the end of the day, it was this last shot here which is the only one I’ve found fit to publish of this pagoda so far.
A Secret Within
These doors are located on a building very close to Trafalgar Square in London. I’ve shot them before because they look great at night, but last time I did them I noticed a smudge on my glass which put a very soft spot in all of my images from that night. Though only noticed if looking closely, it bothered me. I don’t think I had my wind angle back then either, so wasn’t able to capture quite as much in this shot back then as I can now.
I’m not sure what the building actually is, the only thing that Google mentions is there is a shipping company and I’m not too sure that’s what it is.
The columns in the shot must provide a little shelter for homeless people at night as I had to go up and move a flat piece of cardboard, possible someone’s bed, so that it didn’t appear in the shot. There was also a very harsh light coming in at the top center of the image on the left side of the slanted stone; luckily the light on the right side had blown so I cleaned up the left side in photoshop using a cloned and flipped section from the right. Without doing this the left side of the arch at the top was horrid. The central light remains and isn’t too harsh so adds to the image rather than blows everything out.
This scene is certainly nothing that stands out when you walk past it, but the urge to shoot it took over on that initial night when I did first take it; I’m very pleased that I did.
Guy with a Piano
The title of this post refers to the two buildings which feature prominently. The ugly building at the far right is Guy’s Hospital. The tall pretty building being developed beside it is the Shard. The latter was designed by Italian Architect Renzo Piano. Also in the shot is Canary Wharf, the cluster of buildings at the back – and just in front of these is Tower Bridge.
I was browsing through my unprocessed images this weekend with little inspiration as to what I wanted to process. I have so many from abandoned buildings and rooftops that didn’t quite make the cut in the original ‘back from a shoot, let’s see what we’ve got’ phase that I’m a little bored of seeing them again and again when digging into my shoebox.
I headed back to shots from this location knowing I had a few in there that were definitely usable, I’m just sorry that it’s very similar to the Morning Shard image I’ve posted recently. I loved that last image, but now I think I’m liking this one a little bit more.
So I certainly need to find the time to get out there and shoot more, and I think I need to start shooting lots of different things so that I have more variety to go back to and process depending on my mood.
Of course yesterday I went out there and shot from an abandoned location…but soon I’ll get to the variety!
In other news, over the weekend I just went over 100,000 views on HDRSpotting.com. It’s a nice site that serves to promote your HDR work, and I look forward to seeing the changes that the staff have coming up there in the near future. 87% of the 100,000 views were for my urbex piano image, The Day The Music Died.
I have a few spare invites for the site, so if someone wishes to join drop me a note on Twitter to @murphyz, and it would be nice to have a link to some of your work also.
St Paul’s – World AIDS Day
On December 1st 2010 I read an article stating that several London landmarks would be lit up in red to raise awareness of World AIDS Day. I had been spending some time on a rooftop near to St Paul’s so thought this would be an ideal time to capture this amazing landmark lit up in an unusual way, so in the early evening I set out with a friend to go take some shots.
The dome wasn’t lit quite as I was expecting it, and we spoke to a guy in a hut (to the left of this shot) as it was his job to stand there all night pointing a spotlight at the building. He said the whole dome couldn’t be lit due to budget…which was a shame.
I remember it being extremely cold that night; there was a new piece of scaffold erected at the location which meant the roof extended further forwards than it used to, and the wetness combined with wind made the scaffold like Ice – but I got a few decent images out of it.
Our photowalk ended on the south side of the Millennium Bridge where you can get a view of the bridge with St Paul’s behind it, so I said goodbye to my friend and we parted ways – I opted to head back over the bridge which was one way for me to walk home, and would allow me to take a few final shots before packing up.
I’m glad I did!
Now that night had set in the red light cut across the sky and was pretty nice to look at, and I knew with a long exposure I would be able to capture it quite well. At the same time it was starting to snow, which annoyed me as it was the kind that moves in all directions and kept on landing on my glass which was frustrating. Still, it enabled me to get the shot above, and the movement of the snow was captured quite will in the strong beam of red light that was being cast towards the cathedral.
Readers who have been following my photography for a while may recognise this as I did process the shot originally in December:
I wanted to enter another competition which requires submitting an image of St Paul’s, so I opted to do a re-process of this image, and I hope you agree I have improved a bit since December.
From St Paul’s to the Shard
Here’s a shot I took a couple of months ago when on one of the rooftop excursions. It’s sometimes hard to get Panoramic shots from these places as there is generally a part of the building which is going to be in the way, or scaffold that creeps into view. This one, therefore didn’t take in too wide an angle as part of the panoramic.
Saying that, this one does feature two of my favourite London buildings in a fight between old and new. St Paul’s on the left is still number one for me, and is a building that I hunt out whenever up high in the hopes to see it. The dome no longer seems to be lit as brightly as it used to be, and the dome lights actually seem to be switched off at 11pm or so which is a shame as it’s not always lit as well as it could be for these things.
The Shard, on the right, is the new boy in town and will be the tallest building in Europe once complete in 2012. This one you can’t help but see from up high, and pretty much anywhere else in London, so no hunting required here. He’s shiny.
Along with Canary Wharf, the Gherkin and Heron Tower viewable between the two of them you can also see the silhouetted form that is the Tate Modern, an old power station designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott which is now converted into a gallery. He is the chap behind the beautiful Battersea Powers Station, and also the very iconic red telephone boxes that you see around London.
Panoramic Planet – London
I thought I would try something fun for today’s image.
This wasn’t the highest rooftop I’ve ever been on, and the views certainly weren’t anything special, but I opted to try and grab a panoramic shot of the surrounding sights to see how it would turn out.
Once I had the normal panoramic processed I noticed an overlap of the image, where a lot of the buildings at the start of the shot were then repeated at the end. This meant I was easily able to crop the shot so that it wrapped perfectly, and use the Distort > Polar filter in Photoshop to turn it into a nice circular planet shot that I’ve seen several times before online but never really done myself.
I quite like the effect for the fun that it is, and it allows me to add a bit of interest in to what was otherwise a pretty uninteresting shot.
Quite a few of the usual culprits are in there including the BT Tower, Centerpoint, Millennium Wheel, Barbican, St Paul’s Cathedral and The Shard.
