Sunday, the day of the sabbath – the choice = Tottenham vs Swansea or a Shoot, I can’t watch the team white so its a downtown train. With some city shoots I aim to time the shoot to coincide with the rush of people and traffic which I’ll include in the frame. However for this shoot which I’ve had on my mind for awhile, sunday was the perfect day – the lack of traffic / commuters / security guards meant I could have peace to sit on the pavement at the foot of the Lloyds building, in central London.

I picked up the Nikon 14-24mm Lens in New York recently as a little treat, I’ve been looking forward to using this along with my new body (Nikon D800E) to reimagine some of my previous shoots in the city. Being able to zoom out to 14mm which is close to a fisheye perspective allows me to be a few metres from the foot of a building and yet still fit the entirety of the structure in frame.

The Heron Tower, London, England

This is the newly finished Heron Tower (near liverpool st), shot handheld on my way to the primary location. I’ll come back and do more of the amazing building soon.

Looks good on the back of the camera, I always like the reflective nature of glass buildings, now over to the main event. I scope out the location with a slow walk around the building – I know where I want to do the main shot but its not time yet –  i want it a little darker, so I’ll set this up to do i the meantime..

Struggling now to do this handheld but its not possible with this tripod set up to angle the camera directly up – I’ve pumped the ISO to 800 and aperture is almost wide at 3.2, usually you’d struggle for sufficient depth of field but at 14mm it almost infinite. I love the industrial look of this building with all the pipes visisible on the outside, reminiscent of The Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Lloyds Building, London, England

This is the one I came for, I’ve got the tripod angled up and I’m crouching on the pavement, lens is zoomed out to 14mm to get as much as possible in, D800E is at F8 (no point stoppng down further and have diffraction softening the image, and I don’t need to slow the shutter speed either) 1 second exposure at ISO200. Only exposed a few frames – its amazing how quickly the light changes at this time of day, after a short while the sky is losing the blue colour and being lit by the light pollution of the city. I move on to one final shot before heading home..

Lloyds Building, London, England