The Artful Engineer

Upon my arrival at Heathrow from Denver with my wife and son, we checked in to our hotel near Russell Square and walked over to the British Museum. As is my practice when I am in a more casual photographic mood, I just bring my 40mm lens because it is light and unobtrusive. (Let’s ignore the bulky Z8 that it is attached to.) I’ve always liked 40mm as a focal length and find it easy to work with. For whatever reason, I have never much cared for the inexplicably-popular 50mm—it always feels like the anti-Goldilocks lens to me: too long or too short, and never just right. That’s my subjective experience with it as a prime lens, anyway. When I look at the distribution of focal lengths that I have actually used across 32,000 images with my 24-120mm zoom, I do indeed have a noticeable preference for the shorter end of the 35-65mm range, but 50mm-ish is hardly unused.

That digression aside, while I enjoyed photographing statues and such inside the museum, my favorite image was of the glass roof over the main courtyard, above. There’s a lot of fun geometry, shadows, reflective glare, and that wonderful arc of orangish lights.

On our later trip down to Dover Castle, I found lots of interior stairways and windows with nice lighting. This first image makes good use of the light shining through the colorful stained glass window. This is a case where I wish I had had my wider zoom with me: a little more space in the lower left corner would have been good.

This next image was of a wartime structure on the castle grounds. I love the silhouetted ladder against the softly-lit wall. I’m glad the window was there, too, although I think the image would have worked without it.

This next image has nice contrast between the texture of the walls and the texture of the floor, as well as some cool-warm color contrast. The grid pattern of the window itself and its shadow also play well with the pattern of the brickwork below. All of this depended on fortuitous placement of the sun, which gives it a moment-in-time element that makes it a little more special. You have to make the most of serendipity when it happens. For me, that’s a lot of the fun.

This next image combines interesting geometry with interesting textures. The cool light in the window accents it against the yellow-ish stone. I had to do a bit of work on this to eliminate two ugly annoyances: a rope blocking visitors from descending the stairs beyond this point and a very out-of-place industrial-looking light fixture on the ceiling. Even knowing this, I don’t think you can tell where they were.

Back in London, this next image is taken looking straight up from the bottom of the Monument to the Great Fire of London, which happened in the year 1666. It’s a long climb up: 311 steps from ground level.

This post wraps up coverage of my visit to England this past spring. I have also posted a couple images from this trip on the home page over the past few weeks. If you missed any, you can find them in the Past Images of the Week gallery.

I hope you enjoyed this series. Starting next week, I’ll be sharing images from Rome. Thanks for visiting!