This is my last photo from London, for now.
It’s not easy to take photos from the top of the Shard as it is all enclosed in glass. As a result, I had to try to find a way to position my camera to avoid all the reflections of the people moving around behind me. We had arrived at just the right time though, as golden light bathed London below us.
This is another shot from my 12 hour layover in London on my way to South Africa. This was actually taken on New Years Eve. I wondered if they’d mark midnight in some way while on the plane. Sure enough, I woke up, parched, to be offered what I thought was water – it was still dark and most people remained asleep. As I took a sip, I was shocked to discover that it was actually champagne.
The architecture around London is really quite fascinating. Old structures are juxtaposed against ultra modern designs all over the place. This photo, comparing the egg-shaped city hall to Tower Bridge helps to get this point across.
I took this photo between overnight flights on my way to Capetown. I managed to get my camera set up on my tripod all set up ready to take bracketed photos when I saw a security guard approaching out of the corner of my eye. As he got closer I hit the shutter button and as I spoke with him my camera worked away getting what I needed. Once I convinced him I was just a tourist he was satisfied and asked me not to take photos of the reception in the building.
I’ve made it to Cape Town with sanity almost intact! I managed about 2 hours sleep on my first overnight flight from London to Bermuda. It was a dreary overcast day in London, just as expected. I summoned up the energy to spend a couple of hours taking photos, despite the rain. Following that I met up with a few friends from London I haven’t seen in a long time, and a couple of friends from Bermuda who I see all the time.
I set out for Heathrow Airport a bit later than I should have. It turns out that the Heathrow Express doesn’t run quite as often as the Gatwick Express. I wasn’t too late for the flight, but didn’t manage to pickup a few bits and pieces I wanted, like extra camera batteries, but I can get on fine without any of it.
The next flight was a long one, 11 hours. I really expected to crash out and sleep through most of it. Unfortunately I woke up about 5 hours before landing feeling refreshed! The last time I did this flight I’d had quite a lot to drink, so did manage to sleep through the whole thing, despite waking up briefly and discovering I was hungover. I spent about 4 hours on this one, watching movies, sat in the darkness, surrounded by sleeping people. I did reach a point where all I could think was please turn on the lights and people start moving around, I’m going insane.
Following that I had one last hop, from Johannesburg to Cape Town. A two hour flight with hardly anyone on the plane. I might as well have had someone book a private jet instead of this. I succeeded in sleeping through that one nicely!
Today’s photo is from my wander around London, I think I’ve got about 5 good pictures out of it, mostly of Tower Bridge. I was trying to find a way to create an image of the bridge that was more interesting than just a photo of the bridge. I fired off a lot of frames, and got lucky with this nicely blurred double-decker bus. In my mind I just wanted to catch the bus on the bridge, I was pleasantly surprised when my +2 exposure came out with the bus looking like this!