London at night is an awesome city. Lights, music, noise and a feeling of culture mixed with bohemian lifestyle. There are millions of images of London at night from the main tourist areas to dimly lit backstreets of East London where Jack the Ripper once stalked. So how can you do unique night photography in London? We would like to show you a few techniques we use to shoot London at night.

We are fortunate to live within an hour’s train ride away from the centre of the city and I, Tim, spend a lot of my life around there running Adobe training courses for business. Of course at the end of the day the last thing one wants to do is to go around creating images especially if it’s winter so Ally and I make special photography trips to London just to shoot. If you are visiting London from other areas there are lots of Airbnb places near the centre but even if you are further out, you can still get late night tubes (24 hours Friday and Saturday) or a night bus home when you’re ready.

A few tips before we start

Dress warmly as the river area can get particularly cold out of summer months.

Travel light – You will walk a lot so remember, the weight of your equipment is inversely proportionate to how far you can explore.

Try to walk as much as possible using maps and not the tube. You will discover more this way.

We rarely carry a large tripod at night, preferring to hold a mini tripod on a wall or other solid surface for long exposures.

London is relatively safe but don’t flaunt your equipment in deserted areas.

Movement with long exposures

Steady your camera against a solid object and use long exposures to get moving lights. The image of Parliament Square with the red bus blur was created by putting the camera on a small wall and using long exposures. Ally tripped the shutter just as the bus entered the scene with a 5 second exposure.

London Bus Blur long 5 second exposure

Long exposures of water at night are really effective especially if there are coloured lights in the scene. Ally actually hand-held the fountain one, just balancing it carefully on the edge of the fountain.

For more about long water exposures read our ND Filter article.

Long exposure of water in Trafalgar Square, London

Use reflections

London at night is just a mass of coloured lights and the river Thames (pronounced Tems) is perfect to reflect these lights. For more on why reflections can make awesome images read this article.

The view across the Thames to London city from Charing Cross bridge

I hand-held the image above from halfway across Charing Cross bridge. I was also aware of composition rules and used symmetry on the horizon as well as placing the largest buildings on the third. For more details about composition rules see our article on How to photograph like Arnold Newman

Look for the unusual

A few years ago I was out photographing by myself (Ally and our daughter India were at the ballet at the Royal opera house). I quite like ballet but I thought I’d go shooting instead. It was just after the terrorist attack in Paris at the magazine Charlie Hebdo. I came across this  memorial outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The person paying respects just happened along as I was taking the image.

Paying respects at Charlie Hebdo memorial

Use a narrow depth of field.

Try isolating subjects and get interesting out-of-focus light details. I used f2 on a very old leica 40mm lens on my Sony A7R to get the interesting bokeh donut highlights when I photographed this scene in a night market in Greenwich, London. The complementary colour scheme red/yellow and blue also helped.

Lights in Greenwich using narrow depth of field with aperture wide open

Finally

Doing night photography in London during summer is an absolute joy and you may find yourself photographing into the small hours, but the lack of sleep is far outweighed by the incredible images you create. London at night during winter is a totally different city however, and the main obstacle to photographing during winter nights is the cold. Enjoy your winter photography by stopping every so often at the numerous late night cafes around central London. Not only will you warm up but you might see interesting scenes that you would otherwise have missed.

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(or how to photograph like J.M.W. Turner)

This is Creative use of Shutter and Aperture series no 1

We are great fans of super sharp images and usually do all we can to get things razor sharp. This could be by spending extra on lenses (we both use sony camera now with rather pricy Zeiss glass). Or it could be we sacrifice our health to carry a heavy tripod to our chosen scene to avoid any camera shake. Sometimes however, the subject calls for a more impressionist style and this is where some camera motion blur created by panning comes in.

The how and why of the subject

The subject I (Tim) choose for my panning for camera motion blur was old cars. Now 2 things you should know. Firstly both Ally and I really like photographing old stuff, be it trains, planes, boats or automobiles. Ally aIso like cruise ships and gets very excited whenever she sees one – real life or on the screen. This strange affinity for large floating hotels is because she spent some time as a photographer on the Caribbean cruise ships many years ago. That was about the same time as I was photographing crime scenes around London. Mmmm… I wonder who had the better gig? I digress, so on to the subject matter.

The second thing you need to know is that I absolutely love a painting by J.M.W. Turner called ‘Rain, Steam and Speed – the Great Western Railway’ that gives the impression of the movement in the painting. If you haven’t seen this beautiful painting then look here. Turner painted a slightly blurry impression of the train and then used the steam to add movement to the scene the and I hoped to create the impression of movement in my cars photographs.

London to Brighton Veteran car run

There is a ‘race’ every autumn for vintage cars that goes from London to Brighton in the UK. If you’re travelling around the UK November time, this is a really interesting spectacle to photograph. I use the term ‘race’ lightly as most cars go well under 20 mph and often break down several times along the route. There is no place order – if you finish before 4 pm you get a medal. The run has been going every year since 1927 but was first started in 1896 and is for cars built before 1905. There was even a fictional movie about it made in the 50’s called Genevieve. Now combine the beautiful autumn yellow leaves with a blue sky and an old car and you can see we are already set up for some amazing images especially when you add the steam of a cold morning into the mix.

Equipment

Now while I like to travel light I don’t always make things easy for myself. I wanted beautiful images of the cars with all the colour of fall so I went with medium format and colour film. A Hasselblad 500c/m with a standard 80mm lens and a Hasselblad SWC/M which has a super wide 38mm (by medium format standards) fixed lens. When I was standing at the side of the road watching a few cars go by I realised my mistake. Super sharp images of these cars wouldn’t show the movement. If you’re looking at getting into film photography, see our best film cameras for beginners guide, best black and white films for travel photography, and how to load 35 mm film into your camera.

Sharp but dull image

Not so sharp but an infinitely more pleasing image

Panning for camera motion blur

I decided to use the super wide Hasselblad to pan with a slow shutter speed to create movement. The SWC/m has a separate finder on top so it’s actually easier then you would think.

The technique

The way this works is to follow your subject, as it passes, with the camera and when you push the shutter button to take the exposure just keep following. Don’t stop the panning movement until well after the exposure is finished. Now combine this with a slow shutter speed – start with around 1/15 second. It’s best to practice this with a digital camera as it takes a bit of getting used to and there will be many ruined images. The longer the shutter exposure, the more blur you get, but the less sharp the main subject will be.

Panning with a slow shutter speed keeps subject sharpish and background a blur

Pan and blur for images with a JMW Turner like impressionism

Spinning wheels

The other thing that happens is that the car wheels end up with circular motion blur too. Cool!!

Circular motion blur created by the longer exposure

Wide angle

I used a really wide angle so I was really close to the cars. This meant that the blurs have this awesome distorted look to them.

The final results

I scanned the negatives using a flat bed Canon f8600f scanner and then cleaned them up with the Raw file converter. Sounds weird but I scan the images to tif files and then you can open both tif and jpg files into the Raw file converter in Adobe Bridge. Ctrl + R (PC) or Cmd + R (Mac)

A bit of dodging and burning and some sharpening helped the image to ‘pop’.

These then become non destructive edits.

Try it out

This technique works so well on any moving subject. Mechanical objects are a-given but panning for camera motion blur can create incredible images of people and animals with blurred backgrounds and interesting blurs on legs and swinging arms.

Take lots of shots, get a nice smooth panning action and finally experiment with different shutter speeds. Above all – enjoy every new technique.

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As an experienced photographer I would have laughed about using my smartphone as a camera a few years ago but all this has now changed. Although it’s not ideal some very good images can be made with an iPhone, iPad or Android phone camera. Here are our 6 phone camera tips to quickly improve your photography.

So what has changed our minds about using smartphones?

Well a number of things. Firstly the quality. Although not DSLR or even point and shoot camera quality, it is still possible to get an acceptable image from a cameraphone as long as you’re not going for very low light, or want to enlarge or crop part of the image.

Secondly when we have been out, sometimes it’s the only camera we have with us. The photograph of Tower bridge in London was only done on an iPhone because I didn’t have my mirrorless camera with me.

Lastly and sometimes most importantly: You can create photographs and nobody minds as it is seen as part of life. Try pointing a pro-camera at a scene and you’ll sometimes attract lots of security trying to stop you that you won’t get using a smartphone.

All the images below were created using our iPhone 7 phones.

So lets start looking at awesome phone camera tips

1- Choose an unusual angle – go high or go low

I photographed Tower Bridge with the small water feature from down low to give more foreground detail and interest to a subject the has been photographed millions of times before.

2 – Use contrasting subjects – vegetation vs steel – soft vs hard – tall vs short

For the photograph of Lloyds in the City of London, UK  we went down low to get the foliage in the foreground. This worked in 2 ways. It firstly hid the unsightly traffic but more importantly the matt living wild plant life was in total contrast to the shiny dead repetetive steel of the building.

3 – Photograph low light by resting the camera on stable objects

To create this image of Tower bridge (London, UK) at sunset, I rested my iPhone on the very sturdy railings to get rid of any camera shake. I just waited for the sun in the clouds to be in the correct position.

4 – Have your phone ready to take a quick photograph when your camera is put away in your camera bag

We were photographing the Paris graveyard and I had the camera. (Ally and I were traveling super light with just one camera body and a single lens. A Sony A7r and a 24-70 mm Zeiss zoom.) We find the distance we can explore is inversely proportional to the weight of our camera gear. Ally saw the Raven sitting on a grave stone – so very Edgar Allan Poe – and just used her iPhone to get the image.

5 – Photograph in Raw using software like VSCO and edit your images to bring out colours and contrast in photoshop, Affinity or VSCO

While images directly from your phone look okay we will always edit them a bit to bring out the best. Using Raw images gives you so much more latitude in your exposure and then more confidence to try more adventurous (darker, contrasts or even directly into the sun) photos. We would sharpen and in the image below, we removed a reflection of Ally in the glass. For editing we use Photoshop, but any good package is an option – see our thoughts on Photoshop vs Affinity, and the free online Photopea.

6 – Finally use as much symmetry, repetition and reflections  as you can possibly get.

The image above with the dirty glass of a mausoleum in the Paris graveyard is a perfect example of interesting reflections as well as symmetry. The image below of Saint Chappelle is a perfect example of both symmetry and repetition. See here for our low light in churches and cathedrals tips.

Almost symmetry of the Eiffel Tower from below. Unfortunately there was some construction equipment directly under the tower so we didn’t quite get the perfect symmetry we hoped for. You can’t win them all! (So we created some other unique images of the Eiffel Tower on the mirrorless!)

Never be too proud to pull out your phone to create an image. When your work is displayed online after a bit of editing nobody will be any the wiser and you might just get a memorable image you treasure that you could never have got with a traditional camera.

Hope you’ve enjoyed these phone camera tips. Now, go forth and  enjoy yourself.

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Waterloo in London, is the busiest railway station in the United Kingdom with a quarter of a million people traveling through it every day. How do we find a secret place in London to photograph, in one of the most crowded cities and areas in Europe? I discovered this place by accident a few years ago while out exploring and have visited to take photographs again many times. Yesterday, Ally and I took our cameras to photograph a secret place in London where she had never been before. Let me tell you about it and how to find it.

What is this secret photographic place?

It’s a tunnel covered in graffiti!
“Really Tim? You expect me to read a post about a grubby road tunnel next to an overcrowded station?”……
Now before you stop reading let me explain a little more …

Banksy tunnel or to give it its correct name Leake Street Arches is an incredible photographic paradise.

It is nicknamed “Banksy tunnel” because the well known street artist called Banksy organised The Cans Festival there in 2008. He invited graffiti artists with stencils to paint their own pieces.

Street Artist hard at work in the Banksy Tunnel unaware of us taking photographs.

Banksy Tunnel is now a spiritual home to some of the best street artists in Europe and the best thing about it is, you can usually find some of them working on a huge piece there. Most of the artists work freehand rather than stencil so the scope for interesting images with artist doing big sweeping movements is immense.

The tunnel is just an amazing photography opportunity for people and textures as none of the artists object to being photographed while they work.

Another Street Artist creating a very large piece. The smell of aerosol spray paint can be overwhelming. We were surprised he wasn’t wearing a mask.

Low light

As this is quite a dark tunnel we put the ISO on the camera up to 1600. A bit grainy but I feel the grain adds to the secret London place feel of the image. It’s grungy, dirty and in your face so the grain seems to work really well. See our post on low-light photography.

The Vaults, Leake Street, London where you can safely photograph a secret place

Is it safe?

Absolutely. Despite what you might read in the press, London is very safe. Unless you go to totally deserted areas at unsociable hours you’re highly unlikely to have any problems. I have been photographing in and around London for the past 25 years and have never once had a problem. Be sensible, and like anywhere in the world don’t flaunt your equipment in dark deserted areas late at night when nobody is about and you’ll be fine.

A bonus not quite so secret place

When I was out exploring areas of London with our son Jethro (excellent Illustrator – see his illustrations here), he took me to this most awesome, quirky and cool little bar/café. It’s just outside the far tunnel exit and is called the Scooter Caffe. You might walk right past it without a second look.

You could walk right by the Scooter Caffe London, Waterloo, and miss a phenomenal experience

Coffee with Jethro (left) and pan of  the interior of the Scooter Caffe, Waterloo, London

The theme of this beautiful grungy bar is old Vespa scooters and all the details that go with them: helmets, number plates and appropriate film posters. Go in and you’ll be rewarded with a unique experience.

The staff are so friendly and whether you have a quick coffee or spend a few chilled hours with several bottles of very good cider (yes I did both), you will be rewarded with some interesting details to photograph.

Lighting is a challenge as there is darkness with neon lights inside but daylight streams through both ends of the building.

Wander down the tiny spiral staircase for more interesting details to photograph. We had a similar issue when photographing Truth Coffee in Cape Town.

Beautiful textures and shapes that you can photograph when you find a secret place 

To quote from the We Are Waterloo website, “It featured in the third Bourne film, Johnny Depp has dropped in for a drink and Ethan Hawke is a regular when he’s in the area.”

Where to find these secret London photography places

When exiting Waterloo station (there are at least 4 main exits) you need to head around to the back of the station. The easiest way is to go out out the front, turn left and find York Road. A very short way down York Road (you’ll see the London Eye on your right) you’ll find Leake street. Turn left into it and after a short walk you’ll be there.

Once you’ve finished creating amazing images and wondering how some artists painted the ceiling, head out the opposite end of the tunnel and turn right into Lower Marsh Road and you’ll see the Scooter Caffe.

Ally inside Scooter Caffe after a long day of photographing a secret place in London

Two secrets for the price of one

If you are just passing through Waterloo station and have some time before you next train or your visiting the London Eye (five mins walk away) be sure to take a tour of the Banksy Tunnel, and once you’ve finished making images there, give your creative soul a treat and head over to the Scooter Caffe. You will not be disappointed.

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