Urban Sprawl

Whilst in London I went up the Shard on its opening weekend with Aaron Yeoman, he talked about his experiences here.

 

From a photography point of view it was a bit disappointing as the glass was very reflective and the glass surfaces were dirty, tripods were not allowed but we knew that before we went up and they would definitely cause problems if every photographer had one up there.

 

If I was to go up again I would take a fast zoom lens and a gorrillapod. With the zoom lens I would have been able to be a bit more selective with my shots and avoid some of the glare encountered using a wide angle lens. There was one person with tripod up there and they were shooting with it without any interruption from the officials, i'm guessing they managed to store it in their bag to get past security, even though they used bag scanners. As an alternative i think a gorillapod would be better as it would be more discreet and I guess it could be wrapped around the hand rails which surround the top viewing platform. There are also two viewing areas, a top level and bottom level. The bottom level has dimmed lighting so the reflective light was not as much as an issue, especially when down the sides of the floor where the stairwell light did not affect the shot.

 

I have only made small changes to this shot, I toned down the saturation of yellows in lightroom and I have blurred the foreground to give the shot a bit more sense of depth.

Done