London
Tower Bridge is perhaps the most iconic structure in London. All travelers visiting London for the first time must at least take a look at this beautiful bridge connecting London East End to the Greater London city centre. It was constructed and completed in 1894 when the booming in development of East End London including South Bank and Elephant and Castle areas (where the famous Ministry of Sound dancing club is) needed a second larger Thames river crossing bridge beside the old London Bridge. The castle feel and beautiful lighting at night made Tower Bridge a must photograph landmark in London, especially at night.
I missed this night shot during my travel to London last year because of tight itinerary. This year, when I was in London for my last stop of my Europe Travel MkII, I decided and made sure I would capture the night scene of Tower Bridge. Thanks to the beautiful clear weather in June, I managed to get at least something for my photo travel blog here.
Some EXIF info: Photo taken with my Nikon D7000 and Nikkor 18-105mm lens. Shot in Aperture Priority manual mode, with Shutter speed set to 10 Sec and Aperture f11.0. Focus distance was set to 24mm. ISO 100. Auto White Balance. No flash fired and No exposure being compensated with Matrix metering.
Tripod was used for this long exposure shot as I aimed for a clean shot with minimum image noise at ISO100, soft shadow from the flowing river water, beautiful star burst effect from the lighting, as well as maximum Depth of Field with small aperture of F11. There was a bit of distraction from the little boat parked in front of the bridge which had spoilt the perfectness of the overall picture frame. Who cares? This was travel photography, not something you set up for.
I shot this rather familiar scene from the East end London along South walk at More London Riverside. Frequented by many photography enthusiasts at both day and night, any photo of Tower Bridge taken from here will all look identical. Again, who cares? At least I got mine in my own portfolio! 
Also, without shooting this, I would not know how accurate my Nikon D7000 magnificent 2,016 pixel RGB sensor is! Without compensating any value of the exposure, my Nikon D7000′s metering got it spot on! This is so important to travel photography when you have very limited time of shooting at each spot that you really need a decent DSLR camera to get the job done in the first few attempts and then move on. It frees up your time for other more important things in capturing great travel photos such as shooting with different compositions at one scene.
In fact I also captured other night scenes around London that night, included Big Ben, Eyes of London and also Westminster Abbey. More to come! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo guide to Europe.
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Planning a short trip to London isn’t an easy job since there are so many attractions to cover in such a huge metropolitan city of UK. However, if spending only a couple of days in London is the only choice you have, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to sacrifice on the quality of your travel. With some planning guides I’m going to list down here, you can still have a fruitful visit to this one of the top travel destinations in Europe.
Here are my 5 steps guide to plan for such a short travel to London:
- First you have to decide those top places you are dying to see in London in such a short stay. Don’t be too ambitious in your itinerary. Instead of rushing around attractions after attractions without going in depth, it would be more memorable and worthwhile to pick only a few tourists spots and spend a bit more time there to appreciate and enjoy. If you are clueless, I would suggest you to visit tourists spots such as Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Eyes, Tower Bridge, St. Paul’s Cathedral, British Museum, Soho, Leicester Square and China Town, without which your visit to London would not be complete;
- Secondly you have to estimate and allocate your budget in traveling to London. This includes budget in accommodation, transportation, foods, and entrance fees. Depends on your itinerary, cost of traveling in London can vary substantially. Off course it would tie back to your purpose of visiting London, either for shopping, sight seeing and attending exhibition like what I did recently. However, if you are clueless again, try allocating between £35 to £90 a day, from backpacking to flashpacking style depends on your budget.
- Thirdly you have to decide the time of year to visit London. If you are visiting London for galleries or exhibitions with specific opening time period, try going in normal days to avoid huge crowds. If you are admiring snowing seasons of London, don’t plan a visit in September. If you are planning a trip to the London Olympic Summer Games 2012, starting planning it now! If you wish to visit London in really tight budget, start eyeing on those low cost air fares and many low season London hotels special offers throughout the year for you to plan and book;
- You should now start planning where in London you should stay for the short stay. There are too many hotels in London to choose from. The extensive local transport including London Underground trains, Red buses, Black cabs, or even trains made picking hotels in London a much easier job to do as long as the hotel is within Zone 6 of central London which means you are covered by the London transport network. If you are planning for a really short trip, as what I did this year, choose hotels within Zone 2 and you can reach most of the attractions by underground! The only factor in choosing hotels in London in this case is your budget and your required level of comfort. ;
- With the above steps followed, the last thing you will need to do is packing your luggage. What shall be included in your packing list of course depends on how you would travel around London, where you are going to stay, when you are flying to London, and what you will probably buy from London. Lastly, don’t leave your camera at home!
Again, short term travel to London should be your last option to choose if you have a second choice, unless you are a frequent flyer traveling to London every now and then. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel guide to Europe
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This is the weekly news updates on travel related events happening around the world. Some would affect your travel plans or your upcoming travel itinerary, while others could lead you to embark on new travel ideas. These are things happening in the past week:
- Air Asia tied up with its rival Malaysia Airlines – Fast-growing budget flyer AirAsia will acquire 20.5 percent of flag-bearer Malaysia Airlines under a strategic tie-up announced Tuesday 9th August, aimed at turning around the loss-making Malaysia national carrier. One one hand, the deal is seen leading to a mutually profitable route rationalisation and other cost savings such as shared aircraft maintenance and joint purchases of planes. On the other hand, it also has raised anti-trust concerns and subject to a monopoly review, it may not necessarily lead to lower prices for travellers. Ream more from MSN News. *Yet to be seen, I doubt this could benefit us as budget travelers and I doubt I could get stealing airfares of Beijing from MAS in future.*
- MATTA Travel Fair 2011 in PWTC, Kuala Lumpur. From 12th to 14th of August, this is the largest travel fair in Malaysia with over 920 exhibition booths being taken up by over 190 exhibitors, ranging from travel agencies, tourism organizations, airlines, cruises, hotel operators to travel related products vendors. Ten’s of thousands of avid travelers are expected to attend the fair to find some good deals in travel packages or air tickets. Read more from the official MATTA Fair website. *If you are looking for all-inclusive travel package like how I traveled to China 3 years ago, then you should be able to get good deals there. Since I dislike those travel hoaxes in all-inclusive travel package, I would rather stay at home and grab good deals online and plan my self-guided travel.*
- The Thai parliament has elected Yingluck Shinawatra as the country’s first female prime minister. She will face the immediate challenge of bringing stability to the kingdom, after five years of political turmoil since her brother Thaksin Shinawatra was thrown out of office in a 2006 army coup backed by Thailand’s elites. *We love traveling to Thailand and I always want to go back there after my Phuket travel 2 years ago, but reluctant after the political turmoil. I really hope Ms. Yingluck Shinawatra could gain back tourists confidence once again and I would definitely visit Thailand again*
- London riot since 7th of August. The trigger for last Saturday’s riot, which then sparked a wave of arson, looting and disorder across London and then to cities beyond, was the death of Mark Duggan. The 29-year-old black guy was shot dead on Thursday, August 4 by armed police operating with officers from Trident, the unit of London’s Metropolitan Police that deals specifically with gun-related murders in the black community. Last Saturday’s events began with a peaceful march to Tottenham police station on the High Road from Broadwater Farm. However, within hours, rioting broke out. London police had arrested more than 1,600 people including 11-year-old student. *I can’t believe my choice of the safest city to travel in Europe could be messed up in 24 hours.*
These are some of the travel news that attracted me last week. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog
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I saw an advertisement being displayed on a London black cab when I was in London recently. It reads as “London’s Calling”. A huge UK national flag was painted (or pasted) over the body of the black cab to make it a colourful cab instead. It looked so attractive and I was hooked. The UK [...]
I know I know. My Europe travelogue for last year’s trip has not been finished writing just yet. Ha ha. . I’m still stuck in Amsterdam while my last year’s travelogue to Italy still a long way to go. Well, you know, shooting photos in field is always more exciting than processing works in studio. [...]
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