London calling
Our Apprentice heads to the bright lights of the big city to capture cracking shots of the capital with the help of pro travel photographer Jordan Banks
On a pleasant spring afternoon, Jordan met Steven on London’s South Bank area of the River Thames, with the landmarks of the London Eye and Houses of Parliament upstream, and the City of London and its famous skyline (that includes buildings such as the Shard and WalkieTalkie) down the river. After a coffee and discussion on camera settings in the spring sunshine, the duo set off to shoot from Waterloo Bridge as their first vantage point.
The bridge was busy with commuters, and as they set up their tripods, Jordan advised Steven to only fully extend two of his tripod legs. The third was opened just enough to rest on the wall of the bridge in an attempt to reduce obstructions to passers-by.
“Would we not just be better off shooting handheld?” quizzed Steven. “After all there’s still plenty of light in the sky, so camera shake isn’t going to be an issue.” “The tripod serves two purposes,” explained Jordan. “And stabilization is just one of them, the other is composition. I use a tripod, even on the brightest days, because it allows me to carefully consider my composition. Once I’ve set up my shot, I know that I won’t get so much as a millimetre of movement between frames, so I can wait for the right light or I can wait 10 minutes for the clouds to clear.”
Take me to the bridge Heading down the river to Millennium Bridge, the pair had planned to shoot down central span, from one end to the other, with the imposing dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in the background. On arrival, however, they discovered ugly construction barriers along one side of the bridge due to maintenance work.
“Cities are constantly changing, with building sites springing up, cranes appearing overnight, and works being carried out – all conspiring to spoil the shot,” explained an exasperated Jordan. “So you have to be adaptable, and come up with compositions to exclude these unwanted intrusions.”
Heading back down to the riverside, Steven set up a composition shooting under the bridge instead, so that the span acted as a leading line from the top-right of the image to the cathedral,
Even with a six-stop ND filter fitted to the lens, and shooting at a narrow aperture of f/22, the shutter speed wasn’t quite slow enough to blur the water, and it still looked a little bit choppy…
“As a rule I normally wouldn’t go any lower than the ‘base ‘ ISO – that’s ISO100 on the D750,” said Jordan, “but rules are made to be broken! We have two choices here, Add an additional filter, such as a polarizer, to slow the shutter speed, or go ‘below’ the standard ISO range into
the ‘expanded’ settings. Normally, the lower the ISO the higher the image quality, but below the base ISO it actually starts to deteriorate slightly again. However, the difference is minimal and I’d choose this above adding another piece of glass in front of the lens. That, in my view, would have an even greater detrimental effect on quality.”
“Another option would be to simply wait for the light levels to drop, but we’ve got more images to take and time is getting short. It’s time we moved on!”
Sunset at tower bridge
A brisk walk along the northern bank of the river and they arrived at Tower Bridge, approaching sunset and into the famed ‘golden hour’. The lights of the city were coming on and the sky was taking on the namesake golden glow – Steven set up at The Maiden and Dolphin fountain.
“I love the layering that you’ve managed to get into the shot,” praised Jordan. “While Tower Bridge is unquestionably the main focal point in this photo, you’ve used the fountain to create foreground interest, while The Shard and city skyline beyond make for a perfect backdrop. But one thing I would change, just looking at your initial settings, is the aperture.”
Steven had selected an f/13 aperture… “I just don’t like f/13!” exclaimed Jordan, “And it’s not because I’m superstitious
– it’s the same for any third- or half-stop setting. I’d go to either f/11 or f/16. In the film days, lenses could generally only be adjusted in ‘full’ f-stops, and so I know pretty well off by heart how much
additional depth of field these will give me. I also intuitively know the exposure settings I’ll need just by looking at the scene, and can approximate the shutter speed for any given full f-stop, so I don’t use my metering system at all. Admittedly, I don’t get it spot on every time, but looking at the image on the back of the camera I can see how wrong I am, and I’ll know how far I need to adjust things – in full stops – to get it right.”
Into the blue
With the sun below the horizon, we’d entered the blue hour – where there’s a distinct blue tone to the night sky, from light reflected off the atmosphere below the visible horizon – and time to move on to set up our next shot. Crossing Tower Bridge itself offered up another fantastic vista, as Jordan explained: “London is both steeped in history and a modern, vibrant capital, and the juxtaposition of the centuries-old
Tower of London in the foreground with iconic skyscrapers such as the Gherkin and Walkie-talkie tells this story perfectly.”
Steven wondered what would be the best aperture to use. “In truth, you could use any aperture you like and get a well-focused shot,” confessed Jordan. “As you’re shooting with a wide-angle lens across the water, with nothing in the near foreground, everything’s going to be in focus. So it’s best to simply select the aperture at which the lens performs at its sharpest. Many are at their best around f/8, including the Nikon 16-35mm f/4.”
Noticing a lack of primes in his kit bag, Steven asked what lenses Jordan used. “For travel photography, I’ll take the 16-35mm f/4, 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70200mm f/4. The quality of these zooms is so good that you’d be hard-pressed to see any difference from a prime lens, and they’re just so versatile. With cities, in particular, you often have limited options as to where you can shoot from, so being able to go all the way from 16mm to 200mm gives me all the flexibility I’ll need. Plus I need to travel light!”
The night fantast ic
The inky blue had given way to the black of night, but there was still time for one more shot. Finding themselves back on the South Bank of the river, Steven set up his tripod next to ‘The Scoop’, an outdoor amphitheatre next to City Hall.
“The great thing about shooting cities is that they’re full of artificial light, so you don’t have to pack up and go home the moment the sun dips below the horizon,” reasoned Jordan. “I love the way that you’re using the neon strip lighting as a leading line towards the distant floodlit Tower Bridge, with the bright windows of City Hall sneaking into the frame.”
With that, a hi-viz jacketed security guard wandered up muttering something about permits. “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” mused Jordan. But time was
getting on, and with superb selection of shots in the bag it was time to call it a night.
Jordan’s verdict Steven was already an accomplished photographer, but just needed a little guidance to improve his cityscape shots. He had a great eye for detail – setting up all the shots we took, and I just advised minor tweaks to fine-tune his composition and settings. He had some superb ideas for how to approach photographing the various landmarks and understood the importance of finding good foreground interest to balance elements of a scene, as well as how compositional devices, such as leading lines, enable the photographer to guide the viewer through the frame. Well done Steven, this really is a portfolio that you can be proud of! Steven’s comment What a fantastic opportunity shooting with Jordan was! I admit to feeling a little out of my comfort zone at first, using Manual mode rather than Aperture Priority, but Jordan reassured me that once I’d nailed the exposure settings, this would yield more consistent results, especially when trying out multiple compositions of a subject. Before today, the only filters I’d used were the screw-in ‘UV’ variety, to protect the front elements of my lenses, but now I’m going to have to invest in some ND grads and ‘solid’ ND filters – they really do make all the difference, turning the choppy waters of the Thames into a far more serene silky-smooth surface. I’m really pleased with my portfolio of images, and can’t wait to get out on my own to put what I’ve learned into practice.