Now I like a good fireworks display as much as the next person, but for some odd reason this New Years Eve the thought of being penned in for hours for a ten minute display by the London Eye just did not appeal.
The other problem I had is that I have an aversion to taking photographs when other people are taking exactly the same photograph. Like most press calls. Why not get one person to shoot them and everyone else could go and have a nice cup of tea?
Anyway I wandered out of my flat at 11.15 (PM, not AM as I heard of one person who was in position by the London Eye at 6PM) and wandered along to Hermitage which is just down the road next to Tower Bridge, about a five minute walk.
I had originally toyed with the idea of photographing reflections of the fireworks in the London Shard but thought it was a little risky and on seeing the Shard realised there were too many lights on.
But from Hermitage the low clouds above the London Eye were being illuminated by the searchlights so thought I would stay there.
Did a couple of test shots with my trusty 5D Mk2 and 24 – 105mm and thought that if the fireworks were high enough I might get something. (My 70-200 zoom was in good hands on Waterloo Bridge at the time but I didn’t need it).
Of course as soon as you put a decent camera on a decent tripod people think you are the local expert on <insert whatever you are photographing here> but I was at pains to point out that I might get a view of the fireworks but it was by no means guaranteed.
But at 12 midnight the fun started and I was quite happy. Good photos of fireworks? No. Good photo of the night sky of London painted red and green with the London Shard and Tower Bridge in the foreground? Oh yes! And I seemed to be the only photographer there.
(This is a very good photo of the fireworks taken by Vickie Flores).
Usually I shoot fireworks on manual (lots of practise at Aste Nagusia in Bilbao) but I used shutter priority at a second or two seconds and under exposed by two stops. Seemed to work.
I think I took about 124 shots on RAW and JPEG as is my habit and edited them down to just two.
You can see these two shots on Flickr here.
As soon as the fireworks finished I packed up and was home in ten minutes. Total time elapsed from leaving sofa to returning to sofa? One hour 10 minutes.
A very nice evening surrounded by lots of friendly East Enders. What more could you ask for? Oh yeah – a 300 2.8 Mk2 
