Despite a feeling that perhaps this wasn’t going to be my best trip into the capital (an unpromising weather forecast plus the school holidays seemed to indicate that it was going to be hard work), I packed my camera bag and took myself off to London for the day. I didn’t go with much of a plan as such, I decided to just head wherever the mood took me. I sort of had a bit of sense that I wanted to go to Borough Market and Shoreditch, but other than that, I had no set walking route or list of places to go. Let’s see where I end up and what comes to me.
One thing I do tend to do on a photography trip is try to work out which lens I would likely benefit from in each area. My standard lens, the one I take most of my photos with, is the 33mm. I kinda know I’ll capture most scenes with that lens on my XT3. Alongside the 33mm I have the 18mm and the 50mm. The 18mm tends to be my go to when I am in a place that is crowded or there’s very little room. Maybe for architecture too. The 50mm I prefer for either the most open spaces, or where there is potential for more abstract or detail type images. The 18mm I actually haven’t used that much for quite some time. So I decided early on to switch to that at the first opportunity and try to work some scenes with it. I do struggle with wide angle street photography, and I think it’s something I really need to work on.
When working with primes in a large city, I also try to plan safe places for me to change the lens. Obviously in busy areas I don’t want to be fiddling around with expensive lenses, so I try to find spots I know will be quiet and I can ensure my own safety. Of course, things could be easier if I carried a zoom lens but…I don’t want to. On this occasion, St Dunstan in the East served as a good spot to swap over the 33 for the 18 and try my hand at some wider shots.
This was also a good spot to change lens as I decided to head to Borough Market, and I figured I’d really need an 18mm there. Unfortunately, whilst the 18mm was the right lens, it was far too busy for me to get much. I find the crowds and volume of people difficult to deal with when with my camera. I tend to prefer single figures in my scenes, as it makes the composition simpler. Whilst I admire the work of others that do capture moments in large crowds of people, it’s not something I’ve ever got to grips with. I find it too difficult to pick out the details, hunting around with my eyes and trying to take everything in, I don’t have the speed of thought to spot a detail, or a moment where different elements align, and then capture it.
So I left Borough Market without too much in the bag (although I had enjoyed the viral strawberry and chocolate combo at Turnips), and headed off to the South Bank and the Tate Modern. I’ll admit that my primary reason for heading to Tate Modern was a free toilet break. You can never understate how important it is to factor toilet breaks in your street photo walk. There were also some compositions inside that I wanted to explore too, particularly the concrete spiral staircase in the new (well, sort of new) extension. It was also a good opportunity in a safe space to switch out the 18mm for the 50mm and look for some different shots. I hung around for a while hoping to get someone on the staircase coming down, but I soon lacked the patience and looked for other opportunities in the area.
Having fired off a few shots, I headed into the exhibition space and checked out the Joel Meyerowitz display. I concede I wasn’t massively familiar with his work prior to my visit to the Tate Modern, but many of the photos in the exhibition really captured my attention. Inevitably I left the Tate with a copy of A Question of Color in my rucksack.
From there I headed up to the Barbican (not before realising that I had accidentally knocked the ISO to 12800…just glad I noticed that before firing off more than a dozen shots!! See if you can spot which of the images below was shot at that ISO…). By now the clouds had thickened, the rain began to fall and my legs were really starting to ache. By this time, I was really starting to lose the energy and consequently finding compositions worth capturing was pretty tricky. I took a rest at the Barbican, wandered around to see if there were any compositions worth my while, before heading off to Spitalfields and grabbing a burger at Honest Burger (which was definitely worth the trip). At this point though I think I’d had my fill. I was thinking of staying a bit later into the evening, but I think in truth I was running on empty at this point, so I decided to sack it off and head home.
Probably wasn’t my most successful London photo walk, but there were a few shots I was pleased with. More than anything else though, I think the fact I came home with only 288 photos on my SD card tells its own story. Sometimes things just don’t quite align and you don’t really feel it. This was probably one of those times, but it’s ok. If nothing else, it’s made me think more about shooting with the 18mm and try to make better use of it in future. I think there is potential for it to help broaden my street photography, so I’m going to try to force myself to use it more often. Let’s see whether I stick to that commitment…