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.