Tag Archives: dome
Cathedral Church of St Paul the Apostle
Thank you to everyone who showed their support of me after my April Fool joke yesterday. I was touched by the comments and emails received showing concern for my giving up the photography game, and felt a little guilty about having fooled a few people in the end. All is well though; I’m 2 years in to weekdaily posts and hoping to go strong for another 2 years from here. Though some of my post was true, I’m not in this to get the traffic and views and favourites, but because I enjoy doing it. Comments and shares are very nice, and much appreciated, but not a big part of the plan. Not that I have a plan, really.
So, back to normal service as expected. St Paul’s Cathedral is my favourite building in London, and I love shooting it from various angles and indeed various rooftops. I dislike two things about it though.
1. I do not like the new spotlights that they have in place, which are far too bright at night time and do not compliment the magnificent dome at all.
2. I have posted so many images of this subject that thinking of new titles for photoblog posts is becoming difficult.
In other, yet related, news the nice folks over at Topaz Labs have been in touch with a few photobloggers asking them to review their B&W Effects 2 software, of which I’m pleased to say that I am participating. I’ve used it on a few images now, and this is one such example. I’m still getting used to the software; there are things I really like with it, and a few things that I feel can be improved. You can expect a proper review of it once I get to grips with it more, and also once I return from Beijing.
Oh, by the way, I’m going to Beijing.
The Dome
The Millennium Dome in London was built for the Millennium Experience, a year long series of exhibitions to commemorate the year 2000. I think it was mocked by most leading up to the launch, and certainly didn’t do as well as it was expected to. Nowadays it’s the O2 Arena and is used for gigs and other events throughout the year.
Regardless of the intention of the building or what it’s used for now, there is no denying it is a pretty unique structure and one that is often photographed by those who see it.
This is my first posted shot that was taken with the shiny new 5d Mark II – a superb camera that I am really enjoying getting to grips with. I say shiny, it’s already showing a little war paint as I have managed to drop it from chest height already. 36 hours in before that little gem happened. I thought I had it safely locked into the tripod, which has become pretty fussy lately with the RC plate locking in. I was wrong, and it plummeted to the concrete ground. Originally I thought it had nothing more than a little scratch on the corner which had taken the impact, however upon further investigation the next morning I noted there is a crack in the frame. It still works perfectly well, and the camera itself along with the glass that was attached are in perfect working order…just a bit annoying what with it being so fresh. I feel I took it very well though.
It could have been worse, of course. At least it only fell from chest height onto the floor at my feet…it could easily have fallen over the opposite side of the wall I was placing my tripod on, coming to a swift end 48 floors below.
East London
This shot was taken from Broadgate Tower during the Open House Weekend early this – oops – I mean last year (it’s going to take a while to get used to saying that).
The dome on the left is the O2 Arena, which I still often call the Millennium Dome, and then the main buildings of Canary Wharf to the right. I shot at 100mm on a cropped sensor with a cheap lens, handheld, 3 brackets and behind a sheet of glass on a sunny day. As such, the quality of the original brackets is not very and it took a bit of effort to clean up the image as best as I could. By the time I had done so, this tone was the only thing that was making it workable for me, and I quite like how it turned out.
Today’s a nice day, and the last one before work continues once again, so I’ll hopefully find the motivation to head out there for a few hours later and start off my 2012 photography.
Canary Wharf Sunrise
On a recent Urbex trip we decided to make the most of the high building we were on and stay overnight to watch the sun coming up over London – and my word it was a very nice sunrise. I’ll be sharing other photos with you in the future which shows the lovely reds and blues that were in the sky that morning, but for now here’s one with a lot of the golden colours that were showing.
The main cluster of buildings in the image is know as Canary Wharf. and you can see the o2 Arena (previously known as the Millennium Dome) sneaking a peek through the buildings. In the foreground you can also see Tower Bridge.
I don’t often see dawn, and usually not in London when I do, so this was a nice morning for me.
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.
One New Change
This was a very quick shot I took while on a photowalk with TheFella and John.
It was a very, very hot day and John and I had opted to start the photowalk off by having a few pints in the pub before we were met by TheFella to actually then get going.
Not too far into the walk and the beer was having it’s effect on the bladder, so we decided to make use of the toilets at this new shopping/restaurant exchange which has been built beside St Paul’s. Security saw us walking through the site with our tripods, and questioned a random stranger about where his friends with the cameras had gone as a couple of us disappointed to the rest rooms.
We’re always a little uncertain about the boundries of where you can and cannot take shots on a tripod at this location, and I think it also often depends on who is on duty that day, so on the way out as we continued our photowalk I took a few quick shots from here as a bit of fun and to see if anyone would quickly come running over to us to say to stop.
The shots only took a couple of seconds, and nobody bothered us – which was nice.
If you haven’t already recognised it, the building in the background is St Paul’s Cathedral.
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.
