London in the fog

As promised, here’s a shot of the fog that surrounded London (and a lot of the rest of the country) for a few days this week. Whilst causing chaos for the airports, fog acts as a natural softbox for the photographer, helping to diffuse light to create some interesting possibilities.

I spent about eight hours eschewing the Christmas shoppers to wander around the city of London and then along the South Bank, taking over 200 shots along the way. Starting from City Thameslink then wandering up to Smithfield market, down past Paternoster Square to St. Pauls, up to the Tower of St. Alban on Wood St. Then along London Wall to Moorgate, along to Bishopsgate (including detours to the Gherkin and Lloyds buildings) across to the Royal Exchange and then down to London Bridge. Once over the river I was on more familiar ground, walking past Southwark Cathedral, Borough market, Bankside and the Millennium Bridge, the OXO Tower and on past the South Bank theaters (and IBM) to Westminster Bridge, as shown in the shot above.

The whole journey was inspired by reading London by Louise Nicholson with photographs by Richard Turpin. The book has some fantastic photograpgy backed up by great writing about the history of the various parts of the city. The choice selection of my photos are in this flickr set.