Helen Stephenson's Stroll along the Thames, November 8th, 2006

As the French Naval ship Latouche-Tréville (D 646) was the reason behind my walk, I went first to a spot outside Old Billingsgate to get a picture of her. Unlike many Royal Navy ships, Latouche-Tréville did not have the outside of her hull floodlit, so I decided that a picture of the entire ship was going to be the limit of my photographic efforts on her behalf. I set the spotmeter and took a reading off her hull. I knew that HMS Belfast and any buildings in the backgroun which were lit would be overexposed, but this was a picture of Latouche-Tréville, so she was going to be correctly exposed. I also set a tungsten white balance. It's a fraction too cool really, but better than a mushroom coloured ship.

I can't walk along that stretch of The Thames without stopping for some pictures of the Cottons Centre and City Pier. These two pictures of the Cottons Centre aren't the best ones I've ever taken, but they're how it was on 8th November, 2006. The lights in the trees seem to stay there year-round now. They went up one Christmas and never came down.

I do enjoy my close-ups of City Pier. The magenta light reflected in the water is something I hadn't seen before. The central roof area is sometimes lit, along with the clock face it contains, but on this occasion, someone hadn't switched that particular light on. I like the middle picture in the first row. Despite this being a 15 second exposure, I've got a stationary figure on the pier. I think she was so busy texting that she stood absolutely still and involuntarily posed for me!

Working my way back towards London Bridge, the next building to appear in my viewfinder was the London Bridge Hospital. I find that this building photographs better with digital equipment than film equipment, as the lights along the top are fluorescent and film renders them and the areas they light as green. Digital captures a more natural look from this building.

The final sequence of three pictures show No.1 London Bridge in close-up, and from far enough back to see a section of London Bridge, which is lit in red on its east side. The red colour appeared a couple of years ago in the lead-up to Remembrance Sunday, when a lot of London landmarks went red. Although the west side of London Bridge returned to white, the red colour has been retained year round on the east side. The third picture shows the tower of Southwark Cathedral peering over some more of London Bridge. It was very pleasant taking that photograph, as the bell ringers were practising in the Cathedral and my photography was accompanied by the sound of the pealing of the Cathedral bells wafting across The Thames.