Southbank

On the 8th January my photography class went on a trip to the London Southbank Centre. The purpose of this trip was to show us students how easy it is to travel to different places in order to take interesting photos. We met up together at Becontree Station at 9:30 and left very soon after taking the westbound. District-line train to Embankment. The train journey allowed us to formulate ideas about the different photos we would take as well as the ways that we could incorporate our themes into the photos we would take. Upon arriving, we were given a sheet of paper. On this sheet of paper there was map showing us how far we were allowed to go and our meeting point. Below the map there was a grid of twenty words and we were tasked with interpreting those words and taking photos that represented those words. We were allowed to take some test photos while walking across the Hungerford Bridge, however, once we crossed this point and our teacher had showed us our meeting point it was time to let the games begin.

On the way to the meeting point I noticed a roller-skating club, this club had a multitude of lights with a range of different colours and I thought that it would be a good idea to photograph this. So to begin with, the two friends in my group and I journeyed off to the outside of the skating club and photographed both the skaters inside as well as the different rays of light, this was for the word ‘moving’ on our grid. We then proceeded to walk back towards the London eye and began to photograph the skyline across the River Thames. These photograph satisfied multiple words on the grid. For one it ticked off the word ‘sky’ for me. In the photographs the River Thames is also visible meaning that the reflections that existed on the river were visible, satisfying the word ‘reflection’ as well as the word ‘water’. Waterloo Bridge could also be seen in these photographs satisfying the word ‘bridge’. On this bridge buses and cars were seen driving past satisfying the word ‘transport’. After taking these photographs, we proceeded to move further towards Waterloo station, passing the London Aquarium on our way. While walking past the London Eye I had the idea of creating a double-exposure superimposing the London Eye onto a human eye. To achieve this I moved towards the back of Jubilee gardens so that the entire London Eye would be in my frame. I then proceeded to take photographs of the London eye from different perspectives. The first were head-on photographs that made the London Eye look flat. I then knelt down and tilted the camera towards the sky in order to take the photographs from the perspective of an insect. By doing so, I not only got some photographs that I would use for my theme of distortion, but I also satisfied the word of ‘perspective’ by taking the photographs from different perspectives. By the time this was done it was time to meet back at the rendezvous point, outside the Royal Festival Hall, so that my teacher could ensure that we were all safe and send us off for lunch. After lunch we decided to explore the area around the London IMAX cinema. One of the words on our sheet was ‘windows’ and another word was ‘advertising’. The IMAX cinema has a wonderful display of both words as the windows of the IMAX cinema were painted to advertise the mobile game ‘Clash of Clans’. The fact that the cinema was right in the centre of the roundabout made the photo turn out even better because, in reference to the law of thirds, the cinema was placed in the centre two thirds which makes it more appealing. Round the corner from the IMAX there was a series of rigid walls in the shape of a triangular prism. The picture that I took of this satisfied the word ‘rough’ that was on my sheet of paper. I also took some other photos to superimpose on some portraits in order to add to my distortion photo-shoot. From here we went over to the skate park and photographed the graffiti. Not long after this it was the end and we had to meet up outside of the Royal Festival Hall. We then crossed the Waterloo Bridge to enter the station and took the train back to Becontree.