P&P-Part 4; Exercise 2; Busy traffic

Exercise; Busy traffic



 

Going from one extreme to the other, in the last exercise I had to do a single person and for this exercise I have to photograph a lot of people.

I had to choose a busy location, either interior or exterior and watch how the flow of people works and the patterns that they make, any surges or lulls in movement or numbers.

After getting kicked out of quite a few shops I decided that this was not the best place to photograph, even though the January sales lent itself to this particular exercise, I did not want to cause any trouble.

So I instead opted for two slightly different locations, the first was opposite London Borough Market.

 

 

1/15 seconds at f/18.0 – Lens EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS



 

When I first saw this crowd of people I wondered what they were doing, then I realised they were queuing for the cash point.

I tried to shoot this from behind of the queue and on the other side, but it did not give an image of busyness. It is probably the longest queue for a cash point I have seen as they are completely blocking the pavement for passersby, forcing them on to the road, hence the reason I included it in this exercise.

 

 

 

1/10 seconds at f/3.5 – Lens EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS



 

The second location is of London Bridge train station, I managed to take it whilst I was in the Shard and I initially wanted to have a high aperture for this and my wide angle lens. However, because I had to use a polarising filter due to the glass in front, I could only use the lens listed above as I have only the one filter and as you can see the polarising filter did not eliminate all of the reflection of the glass.

I also used a low shutter speed as I also wanted to get some motion blur in the image as well. I think with regards to the exercise this is a good representation of the busyness of the train station, I wanted to get the people coming and going, the families standing around, people meeting, people resting waiting for their train and everyone who looks at the display boards that hang down from the ceiling, without getting the boards in themselves.    

 

 

1/10 seconds at f/4.0 – Lens EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS



 

Using the same filter, lens and settings, I wanted to include the boards as that was where most of the people were. I wanted to get some of the foreground in to the image to show how crowded the area in front of the boards was and how the people dispersed the further away from the boards they were, as this was how the flow of the train station seemed to me.



 

Summary

This is by no means my best work, I feel I have conveyed the busyness in each image in a different way and been able to achieve the look that I wanted. It would have been good to be able to get the same images of the train station without the glass in front as you can still see a slight reflection in both images, which was difficult to eradicate.