“So Tim and Ally, you went to Paris for a week. Awesome! What was one of your favourite times? Maybe the romantic river, how about the photographic interior of Notre Dame?…..”
“Er no. It was when we went to photograph Paris graveyards.”
“REALLY!!!”
Now this conversation could only have been with a non-photographer, as most photographers are aware that graveyards, especially ornate and dilapidated ones, can produce some quite stunning and unusual images. To photograph Paris graveyards was one of the highlights of our trip and we thoroughly recommend it to any photographer who needs more than the usual tourist images of Paris.

This cemetery had so much character and photographic opportunities

Why the cemetery (Cimetière du Père Lachaise)?

Let us tell you about it and we’ll try not to put in too many death puns. Although it doesn’t sound too inviting, a morning or afternoon spent wandering around the mausoleums, some well-kept and some dilapidated, is a very relaxed experience and not in the slightest bit morbid. The photographic opportunities abound with more beautiful textures than you can shake a bony old stick at. While out there look out for graves of Oscar Wilde, Chopin and Jim Morrison to name just a few. However, they are not as photo-worthy as the old and forgotten ones.

How to find it

Cimetière du Père Lachaise lies at the North East side of Paris about 3 km from the centre but is really easily accessible by car or the Metro. Père Lachaise (line no’s 2 and 3), Philippe Auguste and Alexandre Dumas (both on line no 2) and Gambetta (line no 3) all surround the cemetery. There are various entrances around the walled graveyard and depending on which one you use, you can usually find a map of the who’s who of Paris dead and where to find them. (Or you can download and print one before you go).

Getting in the supplies

When Ally first suggested we photograph Paris graveyards to me, I was really excited. How romantic – not! We started off for an early breakfast at an awesome café nearby called Chambelland Boulangerie. They do gluten-free bakery items and the continental breakfast we had was superb. We enjoyed it so much we even bought extra to eat after the cemetery photography. Turns out there is a lovely small wild park on the south side of Cimetière du Père Lachaise and we had our lunch there.

The photographic experience

Don’t feel bad

Arriving at the graveyard we were totally taken aback at how gothic it felt. Don’t worry about offending people by having a camera out. Most people we saw were either making photographs or on a pilgrimage to see their favourite dead artist’s final resting place (and photograph themselves in front of it).

What to look out for

Mini stained glass windows in mausoleums throw amazing light shapes on the stone.

Ravens that frequent the tombs give the images a sense of mystery and Edgar Allen Poe feel

Trees growing through or around old graves can make interesting images.

Try looking for contrasts like saturated colours in a bleak stone surround, or small delicate flowers blooming next to a rusting old façade.

Textures. There are just so many awesome textures we couldn’t get enough.

Post production editing.

Black and white – Try some moody black and white versions of your images. Up the contrast but keep the shadow detail for a little macabre feel or a high key misty image for mystery.

Toned – A duo or split tone can give a eerie feel if for example you mix blue shadows with yellow highlights to get a green; Cyanotype gives a cold feel and selenium or Sepia tone for an old vintage feel.

Blue shadows mixed with yellow highlights

Sepia toned

Selenium toned, using the gradient map

Cyanotype style

Desaturated colour – This equally gives the feeling of life being drained

From well-tended to so old that a large tree has taken over the grave there are image opportunities aplenty when photographing Paris graveyards. Set aside a warm afternoon, take your favourite camera and lens and dig-in. (Sorry, I couldn’t help that one.) You’ll be glad you did.

For more info on this and other places to visit in France, see this great comprehensive article by RV Lifestyle.

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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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More than once, Ally and I have arrived in a new town to photograph, all prepared and excited however things don’t go always go according to plan. The weather is dire, the scene itself is spectacularly awful due to building work, there are too many tourists etc. I’m sure you have all felt this at various stages. Don’t give up! What we do in these situations is to do texture photography. Even surrounded by hundreds of tourists in a building zone during awful weather we can always find some texture detail to light up our photographic souls.

On the surface of it, many people think of textures as just background images. Filler photos to put text on top of but a beautiful texture is a joy to behold in its own right. Think of them a “mini” landscapes that very few people stop to look at and it will bring you hours of photographic pleasure.

Wales snow in sand texture

Dubrovnik roof texture

Church wood and stone texture in cyanotype style

The other use we have for texture photography is to create something that we montage or blend with other images in Photoshop. See the how-to further down this post.

Using layer for texture photography on HMS Victory hull

What equipment do you need?

We just use whatever we have with us and as we said in our bios, we travel very light. I have listed a few things below that could be helpful if you have them with you.

Ally photographing wheel textures on a UK quarry

Macro lenses for close-up

You don’t really need any special equipment to photograph textures unless you want to go really close-up in which case you might need a macro lens. These are lenses that are optically corrected for close-up photography and most of them allow closer focusing than normal lenses do.

Tripods

We find a tripod really useful if we need more depth of field with longer shutter speeds so we can keep the camera steady for that all important sharpness that we try to get. Another use for the tripod is to help compose the perfect image. Having the camera on the tripod allows us to keep the camera composed on one area while looking around to see if there are any other areas that look better without losing our original composition. This seems ridiculous, but with close-up texture photography you’ll be surprised how easy it is to lose that perfect picture, as there is so much detail to take in.

Filters

Filters can be really useful. A polarizing filter can get rid of reflections and boost your colour saturation. A single coloured filter on black and white film can lighten or darken the same or opposite colours. See our post on how to make the sky dark in a photo for more details about these techniques. Even though there probably won’t be any sky in your texture photograph, the same principles apply to other colours. So, a green filter will lighten greens in black and white film photography etc. Of course, you can always do this in Photoshop or Affinity Photo when editing your images created on a digital camera.

Texture photography on old Bristol War Department  tanker train

What to photograph

Just look around you with a critical eye. Texture photography takes in anything that has a texture, so from rough walls to smooth building marble, tree trunks to old rusty metal, there are just so many photographs to create. Ally and I love finding old buildings with weather distressed wood where the paint is peeling and the sun has bleached the colour.

Texture on South African Railway train

Old rusted farm equipment left out in fields or old trains that we come upon while walking, always yields some beautiful textures.

Don’t forget wave and sand textures

Black and white or colour photography?

This depends on what you have with you. If we are photographing with black and white film loaded, when we come upon textures we will be looking for textures that lend themselves to black and white and try to ignore the colour in the scene. (A good tip is to look at the scene through a coloured filter as this removes the multiple colours you see and allows you to concentrate on the all-important texture shapes.)

When using colour film, we look for contrasting or sympathetic hues.

Digitally you can do whatever you like. My (Tim) Sony mirrorless A7R camera has an option to view the scene in black and white through the viewfinder but it still records a full colour Raw file in case I change my mind later. I really like this feature, not just for textures, as it enables me to concentrate on the shape and texture in an image and not get distracted by the colour.

Process

As I mentioned earlier, a texture photograph can be a beautiful image on its own but should you want to incorporate it into a different image it can really bring the image to life. I mixed the photograph of the Lord Nelson ship, the HMS Victory, moored in Portsmouth in the UK with a texture photograph of side detail of the ship. This was done in Photoshop by putting the texture layer on top of the ship layer, reducing the opacity, masking out the areas I didn’t want and then experimenting with various layer modes until I found the one I liked. I used Soft Light however my usual go-to layer modes are Multiply (which hides the lighter parts of a layer) or Overlay (which gives a really increased contrast mix).

Texture photograph on ship for use in final image

Using layers with Soft Light mode for texture photography

I started this post by making out that texture photography is something you do if you can’t do ‘real’ photography due to unforeseen circumstances, but in reality, photographing textures can be an extremely satisfying process and yield some incredible images. Whether for use in a mixed layer image or as a beautiful image in its own right, you will find you can fill your photographic soul with texture goodness. Give it a go and, like us, you will be hooked on textures.

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