Friday, January 8, 2016

Photo A Day #7 -- Raised Tower Bridge in London -- 7 January 2016

Day 7, I'm late, I'm late. It is actually day 8 as I push the button to publish.

Things are crazy around here as I continue to prepare for Texas. I did not even get the chance to ponder what to shoot. I would have liked to shoot Jupiter, but alas it is cloudy right now.

I thought about putting nothing out there, but I will in fact include an image from the past -- something that pleases me and has some significance. I will also reprocess anything I post as that is at least some level of work. I may do this now and again over the year ... but I will try to avoid it.

In this case, I have chosen an image of the Tower Bridge being opened for a large ship to pass. This is not all that common an event since in five trips to London with a lot of time spent on the south bank, I only saw this happen once I believe.

This was shot on my first trip to London in May of 2007. It was a fantastic trip with great weather and we were walking along the bank after dinner one evening when the bridge opened. We stopped and I started shooting. This image is the first image where the bridge blocks a bit of the view of the ship going through, putting the ship squarely under the bridge. Unlike the others in the gallery, I put this one through Photoshop to extend the sky and fix the top of the left-hand tower, where the little cross had been cut off. Easy to do in modern Photoshop CC.

This was shot with my first dSLR, the Nikon D70s. This was a 6mp camera and I must say that, having not processed a 6mp image in a long time I can see why I moved up. The D70s was a wonderful camera and 6mp is enough for a decent 13x19 print, but in the end I much prefer the look of today's sensors and the ability to do a bit of cropping if necessary. But make no mistake, the images came out great for the limitations of the day. This camera remains a classic. The lens was the original Nikon 18-200VR, an excellent all-in-one zoom that was much-maligned by lens snobs. They were wrong in my opinion, as you could get great images from this lens.

I would go back to London in a heartbeat, but I am told that my next trip over has to include Paris, as I have not been there. I hope one day to photograph that city in all its glory.