Sunday 13 April 2014

The idea of my own project

I decided that it might be a good idea, to start my own Bleeding London related project - to photograph every single street in the Square Mile. This seemed like a fun but daunting project. Not only does the city cover a fair distance, but there are a lot of streets and many many tiny little alleys all of which would have to be photographed, and photographed reasonably well - If I was going to do this project, then I would try to get some good images, and not just dash from street to street taking record shots.

As you can see from the image below, the Square Mile is not square in shape. Its also actually a bit bigger than a square mile at 1.12 square miles.


Even at this scale, it can be seen that there are a lot of streets to photograph. No roads though! Not a single road exists in the City, though technically there is half a road. For a bit more info, see this post at the Londonist.

I take my little fuji X100s with me to work every day and usually get in a little early, so should have opportunities for getting a few shots before I start work. The next two shots were from the first of such occasions and taken from a pedestrian bridge across Wormwood Street. The first shows the reflection of Tower 42 in another building, whilst the second, shows just a little of Wormwood Street - on the other side of the crossroads it turns into London Wall.



I also took another picture of Tower 42 (where I work).



Later on I managed a couple of other shots of small side roads/alleys. Austin Friars was an Augustinian friary from the 13th Century to the 16th Century. The site of the friary is enclosed by the streets Austin Friars and Old Broad Street. The only Friary building remaining is the Dutch Church, though this was rebuilt after being bombed in the second world war.


Also just off Old Broad Street is Adams Court, which connects to Threadneedle Street.


And another shot taken outside Tower 42. I have a few here, but I was rather taken by the shadows across the pavement.


On Friday I took my bigger camera, a Nikon D7100, and tripod into work, to take a few pictures after work. I wanted to get a few long exposure shots of London Bridge and the Shard, but the weather wasn't ideal for this as their was no wind, so the clouds were fairly static.I am pretty happy with this shot though.


The next shot was taken on the bridge itself. The sun was getting low and casting long shadows of the commuters crossing over to London Bridge station.


I then ventured south of the river and out of the square mile! At this point I was still thinking of just contributing to the Bleeding London project; I think I had the idea of photographing every street in the square mile on the way home that evening. More London Place near City Hall has some very striking buildings and I have taken a few nice shots here before, but looking up provides a different view altogether.


At the other end of More London Place I saw this great reflection in the front of an office building. I love the South Bank area, but now that I am photographing the entire square mile, I don't think I will be venturing there again for a while.



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