Elysium - a photo on Flickriver

Elysium

Despite returning to the location on several occasions over the past year, I last worked an image of Millwall Inner Dock at the start of 2015. The site at the centre of the Isle of Dogs has undergone extensive construction work over the years, and when I last photographed the location, Baltimore Tower was a construction site. Now, nearly two years later, the 45-storey building dwarfs the Lotus floating restaurant beneath it and soars as high as the buildings at the centre of Canary Wharf.

Capturing the scene with a clear reflection is a challenge because it depends not only on a very low wind speed but also on minimal activity from sailing boats, canoers and the occasional paddling of ducks. On a recent winter afternoon, when the wind speed dropped to 1mph for several hours and when subzero temperatures meant no one was eager to venture outdoors unless they needed to, the right opportunity to capture the scene presented itself. The final image is a combination of photographs that I began capturing at sunset with a two-minute exposure, building on this with four-, five-, eight- and nine-minute exposures as late-afternoon turned to dusk, and finishing with an early-evening 12-minute exposure. Each exposure contributed different details, from the final traces of sunshine across the southwest corners of the buildings and a soft pink glow on the horizon to the deep chilly hue of the evening's blue hour and the cityscape lights being switched on. Two-and-a-half hours after I began shooting, I had all of the exposures I needed to create the image I wanted.

Beginning with one of the dusk exposures as my template, I blended in traces of the afternoon sunlight and the building lights in Photoshop using the Lighten blend mode, which was a gradual process using several exposures as more and more of the lights switched on. This was also a selective process because the lights inside South Quay station were much brighter than some of the apartment lights and needed to be toned down with a low-flow brush, and because I wasn't particularly interested in adding lights from the cranes, which continued operating at Canary Wharf's south dock well into the evening. After this phase, I used the Pen Tool to isolate the sky and the dock's reflection, and used a radial gradient mask to blend in the warmer tones in the sky behind Canary Wharf. Capturing a smooth progression from a gentle red to a muted orange and then to a soft pink that faded into the colder sky was important to me because it seemed like this was where viewers' eyes would immediately be drawn when they first see the image.

With the blending phase complete, colour-grading the image was a straightforward process involving Hue/Saturation, Colour Balance, Selective Colour and Gradient Map adjustments. I also applied a very low-opacity Colour Lookup set to the Futuristic Bleak preset, desaturating some of the brighter colours and playing up the more muted tones. Using Silver Efex Pro set to Luminosity, I then added a small amount of shadow and midtone structure to the buildings, as well as raising the sensitivity of the reds and yellows to gently brighten the horizon. Finally, in Colour Efex Pro, I applied a small amount of the Pro Contrast and Detail Extractor filters to give the buildings a final bit of definition against the sky and to bring out some of the finer details in the building lights.

The final image is intended very much as a companion to the sunrise at South Dock which I captured a year ago, but at the same time there were subtle differences to the scene. The cityscape had the same vibrance and energy, and the reflection conveyed the same elegance and tranquillity, but somehow there seemed to be something darker, moodier and more introspective about this vantage point. As people coming home to their apartments in the residential buildings switched on their lights and opened the doors to their balconies to take in the view, I couldn't help wondering what it must be like to see such dramatic redevelopment taking place around them, and how impermanent, but perhaps also how full of possibility, this transforming spectacle must be to someone seeing it change bit by bit each day.

You can also connect with me on Facebook, 500px, Google+ and Instagram.

Taken on: January 5, 2017

Tags:

London

England

UK more »

Britain

MillwallInnerDock

IsleofDogs

CanaryWharf

Docklands

Skyscraper

Cityscape

Dusk

Evening

Reflection

Symmetry

Symmetrical

Serene

Calm

Tranquil

Peaceful

LongExposure « less

Groups appears in: • in explore

Camera: Nikon D800, f/14.0, 30 sec, 24mm, ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D800
Lens:	24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture:	f/14.0
Exposure Time:	30
Focal Length:	24mm
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	+8/3 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Saturation:	Low
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6.6.1 (Windows)
Show full info

Stats: 56,897 views / 80 comments

go back

Link to this photo view:
Link to this photo large view: