I always try to book hotels close to the city center, so I can go out to shoot early in the morning. And I did the same in Edinburgh. So I got up at 5:30 and took a walk trough the city. It’s so completely different than at night. Everything is so empty and calm, really great for photos :)

This is a manual blend from 5 shots, in this photo the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.

And another new city :) During my latest trip I also visited Edinburgh. It is a really lovely city in Scotland, just a little “under construction”. A lot of the center is construction yard, because they are adding new rails from trams. But still, a really nice city. In this photo I wanted to capture the building, but as the traffic was quite busy, a bus stopped directly in my way. But I liked the new composition with it, so I took the shot.

This is a manual blend from 4 shots. In the photo the The Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh

Continuing with the London photos, here is one taken late in the evening by the Tower bridge. I hoped for more of a blue hour show, but as you can see, the sky was completely covered with clouds, so no luck there. But still it worked out quite nicely.

And I have to say, I was only stopped twice by security guards while shooting by the bridge. Once for being on a private property (no sign anywhere, and I was standing on a sidewalk) and once for being near a dock, for “security” reasons (I was there alone and no ship in sight, so I don’t know whose security it was). But still, both security guards were very nice a and very politely asked me either to move or not to use a tripod. Still I have to say one thing. I have never been stooped on the street for using a tripod. Never. Happened to me only in London.

This photo is a manual blend from 5 exposures, mostly to darken the bright lights on the bridge and to brighten the shadow areas under the bridge.

It’s always so great when I can add a new category to my page. It almost always means a new city or country. And recently I added London as a category and here is already the second photo from there. You can see the whole category list on the bottom right of the page. This is probably also the nicest sky I got the few days I was in London. I had to get there at 5:30 for it. But as I stayed at a hotel just two streets away from this spot, it was just a 5 minute walk :)

This is a manual blend from 5 shots, taken by the Westminster bridge in London.

So when I was taking this photo, the sunset was not so spectacular. But at least the water was very calm and it gave nice reflections of the snow covered hills :)

Manual blend from four exposures, mostly to darken the sky and to brighten the shadow areas of the stones. I left the colors so soft, as I remembered them from that evening :) Photo taken by the Derwer water in the Lake district, UK.