Photos from this weekend

[lmccauley]

I went down to London to visit a friend this weekend, and ended up taking a few photos during the day. Bigger versions can be found on my flickr page. Constructive criticism very welcome.

This is actually a modern sculpture on Canary Wharf, taken with a Sigma 70-300mm macro. I spotted that one part had a series of what looked like stress fractures at right angles to the pattern of the material.
1/80sec, f/5, ISO800, 195mm (macro):


I think this is 1 Canada Square, but I don't know what the other building was.
1/250sec, f/10, ISO400, 18mm:


I tried a bit of street photography with my Sigma 70-300. I liked this one for the tenderness of her ruffling his hair.
1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO200, 300mm:


This one was quite tough, as the light was fading. I had the aperture as open as it would go and ISO as high as I dared. This still only gave me a shutter speed of 1/160 at a focal length of 300mm (35mm equivalent). I would have loved to have VR for that shot.
1/160sec, f/5, 195mm, ISO800:


This shot I wasn't expecting to be taking at all. The light had faded and I was heading for St Paul's tube when I noticed that the rear was illuminated by spotlamps. Again, this was technically quite difficult without a tripod, and nothing to rest the camera on from the position I wanted to take the shot from. Even at max aperture and ISO, I still only had a shutter speed of 1/30, so I'm pleased that it came out OK.
1/30sec, f/3.5, ISO1600, 18mm:


Cheers,
Liam

[Cool-hand]

Hey their pretty good Mac! I like the St. Pauls shot.

Well done.

CH

[sbowler]

St.Pauls is a good shot mate , well done.

[Keith Hurst]

Love the St Paul's shot, it's class.

KH

[JohnG]

Great photos, you were lucky with the weather

[BananaTiger]

Nice set of photos (on here and on Flickr). The St Pauls one is definitely the pick of the bunch. Excellent considering it was handheld too.

[tontoshorse]

Great shots. Personally I like the shot of the lady in the red coat and shoes, although the shot of St. pauls would look great on a wall.

[lmccauley]

Thanks for your kind comments guys. Yes, I was very lucky with the weather, and I was lucky to stumble across some of the shots (although I like to think of it more as being observant ).

The St. Paul's shot has attracted the most positive comments whenever I've shown these photos, yet I hadn't really thought it was that much better than most of the others. Shows what I know!

I've just picked up a 50mm f/1.8, so I'm looking forward to doing some low-light shots. I took a shot that I think fits this month's theme really well with my 18-70mm, but it suffers from noise quite badly because of the low light conditions (I had to use ISO1600 and f/5 was the max aperture available). I always feel disappointed when I see an interesting shot, but don't manage to get the technical side correct, or I take a good technical shot, but the subject looks more bland in the shot than it seemed in real life.

Cheers,
Liam