The London long exposures and light trails workshop was organised by Sebastian Page and started at 18.30 close by Victoria station.
It was forecast to be cold and luckily without any rain. I started my day at Green Park and walked down Piccadilly until I reached Berkeley Street and visited the first Starbucks for a quick lunch. This used to be one of our favourites when I was lobbying venture capitalists quite a few years ago. Nothing much had changed I’m pleased to report!
My walk continued through Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and onto Covent Garden. By 3.30 pm I needed to take a rest and sat out side The Wellington pub. This is on the corner of Wellington Street and the Strand and is opposite Waterloo Bridge.
By the time I left after 4 pm every table outside was now full and I needed to walk to get warm again. It was a relatively short walk down the Strand to Charing Cross to catch the Underground to Victoria. I checked where we planned to meet before walking down Victoria Street to the Cardinal Place shopping centre.
Once in the centre and out of the wind I headed for Zizzi. This was another favourite of ours as it is close to where we visited the venture capitalists after we had received the funding for our start-up. Lunches here were usually before or after board meetings.
I was early and was able to get a table without waiting.
The menu may changed but the pizza was excellent. I lingered quite a while rather than dashing back out into the cold. When I did leave there must have been over 30 people queuing for tables.
Light trails lens requirements
I had kept my lens count to a minimum only bring my 35mm and my 24-105mm lens. This was the advice from Seb:
Battersea – anything that’s 50mm – 85mm is good.
London Eye – 24mm – 35mm is good
Piccadilly/Regent Street – 24mm – 35mm is good
St Pauls – Wide angle is best so 24mm.
Victoria Station
First, we will start by practising some long exposure train light trails with the Battersea Power Station as the back drop. This location it’s really handy to have a shutter release cable as we can switch to bulb mode and increase the shutter speed to 1 minute and beyond.
On Ebury Bridge we had a great view of Battersea Power Station with the Victoria Station South sidings in the foreground (appeal.hobby.beams).
Then it was a matter of waiting for trains. I did have to add my rucksack under the tripod as the wind was rocking my camera enough to make the images blurred.
London Eye
Then we will go back to Victoria Station and jump on the tube to Westminster and practice some night photography photos opposite the London Eye. We won’t stop too long here.
We briefly joined other groups all taking pictures of the London Eye or taking selfies before walking down the Victoria Embankment, up Northumberland Avenue, skirting Trafalgar Square, down Pall Mall and the up Lower Regent Street to Piccadilly Circus.
Piccadilly/Regent Street
Then we will walk up past Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly Circus lastly capturing bus light trails on the edge of Regent Street.
I was surprised how easy it was for the group to set up tripods in such a busy place looking up Regent Street (rival.loses.sing). We could look back down Lower Regent Street and look for buses that would be going up Regent Street proper. This gave us plenty of time to be ready.
St Pauls
We will be then jump on the tube again at Piccadilly and make our way to St Pauls to capture some more light trails.
After leaving St Pauls Tube station we walked down Cheapside then New Change onto St Paul’s Graveyard (seats.shark.store). We could see the buses making the turn from New Change or coming towards us down Cannon Street.
Qute a few of the buses were on their way to Waterloo (#26 and #76) and as we started to pack up a #76 turned from New Change and after a quick dash I made it to the bus stop. This was a much easier way of getting my train rather having to take the Tube and change at Embankment. I was the only passenger. I had a 30 minute wait for a very busy stopping train back to Farnborough.