I've been itching for a lovely sunny day to go for a long walk in London with my camera. The opportunity came last Monday with a weather forecast for a day of solid sunshine and a temperature that would be just comfortable for a gentle wander.
Quite aside from the obvious attractions of a day out pottering in the spring sunshine, there were two specific reasons I wanted to do this.
Inspiration 1. Slides from 1975. First, I recently unearthed an ancient set of slides from a roll of Fuji R100 film that dates from November 1975. There were 6 images on this roll from a photowalk that I had pretty much forgotten about.
I went with a friend I'd met at work (my first job after leaving school). At that point, I'd recently bought my first camera but had spent so much on it that I could hardly afford film to put in it. I had one lens — a 50mm f/1.8.
I have no idea why I chose Fuji R100, perhaps I was influenced by ads like this one. It turns out not to have been a great choice: the slides have discoloured and turned brownish, so I've needed a big push of the colour balance sliders in Lightroom to get them back to a semblance of the colour they should be. (My Kodachromes have survived much better.)
Then (this image) and now (below). November 1975, Fuji R100 slide, Burlington Arcade
April 2023, Beadle keeping watch, Burlington Arcade
Beadle, Burlington Arcade. I asked the beadle if he would let me take his picture as he looked so great in his uniform: he was very kind and immediately agreed. In the event that he sees this — thank you again!
April 2023. Channelling my inner Kirk Tuck :) Burlington Arcade style, a mannequin that could just as well have been from 1975
Anyhow, the images show that the walk included Burlington Arcade, Piccadilly Circus, Waterloo Place, London Bridge, the Monument, Bank/Royal Exchange and the Tower of London. A tourist walk through the various sights of central London more than a photowalk, given that only 6 images came from it. I seem to remember that we started at Buckingham Palace: there's no picture of it, so I evidently felt it was so commonplace as not to be worth expending one frame! I'm pretty sure I would have had an A-Z atlas in my pocket as I was in the earliest stages of learning my way around London. (I still have the 2001 edition of the London A-Z on my bookshelves, unopened and unloved since Google Maps became available on a smartphone.)
The pictures prompted me to try the walk again and maybe take more than 6 images along the way.
Inspiration 2. An old lens. The other stimulus was my Olympus Zuiko lenses that I have mentioned previously. My feeling was that this would be a perfect opportunity to try out a lens that is the direct equivalent of the one I used that day: my Olympus OM 50mm f/1.8 Zuiko Auto-S lens. I enjoyed using this enormously when I tried it out on a Sony full-frame mirrorless camera previously.
You'll think I'm doing it all wrong: I put a 40-something-year-old manual focus nifty-fifty that was second-hand when I got it, on my top-of-the-range Sony A1. There's no way that lens will provide the image quality befitting the 50 MPx sensor; in any case, why on Earth use a manual focus lens on a camera that has the best available autofocus? For fun. And a bit of nostalgia. And for the enjoyment of the process of taking pictures: much more about the process than about the results. It was the simplest of fun taking a mixture of tourist photos, street photos and anything else that caught my eye.
Old lens, new camera — outcome. Having said all that, the results astonished me. Shooting, as my habit was in the "old days" between f/4 and f/11, I got lots of nice sharp results. Yes, a modern lens ought to give better results, especially at the edges, and at wider apertures, but how much would this matter in reality? I'd be more tempted to shoot a modern lens wide open, but f/4-f/11 works for me on a sunny day. And shooting zone focus for street photos replaced AF just fine. Unsurprisingly, I lost some pictures that a modern AF lens would have let me get, but I still came back with far more pictures than I can put in one blog piece.
The great thing about one camera with one prime lens is that you can concentrate on looking at the world with a mental view frame that is the same that the lens gives you. I can "see" a 50mm frame (or field of view) pretty accurately and this makes finding pictures very quick. Accepting that you've only got one lens with you means not worrying that you're missing something by not having a different lens. In any case, all the time you are changing lenses you're not taking pictures.
2023 route. The route I ended up taking was a meander through all the places I passed on that earlier walk and a lot more. So roughly, the route was like this.
Green Park onto Piccadilly and into Burlington Arcade, to Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street St. James, the Mall, Horse Guards Parade, Trafalgar Square, Embankment Gardens, Hungerford Footbridge to the South Bank of the Thames, along the South Bank to the Millenium Bridge, up to Bank/Royal Exchange then on to the Monument, a fruitless diversion to 120 Fenchurch St for the roof garden (fruitless because there were enormous lines for the elevators to the roof on the first day of the Easter school holidays, and I didn't want to wait), then London Bridge back across to the South Bank and along to Tower Bridge. A lovely, very slow potter that took me about six hours, with many pauses along the way for pictures and the occasional coffee, plus a Pret sandwich for lunch. Streets that are so familiar to me after all these years that I needed no A-Z or even Google maps.
If you are coming to London and are looking for a walk to see some of the most famous sights, this is not a bad route. You could add on Buckingham Palace at the start (I didn’t this time, although that was where we probably started in 1975) and go from there.
Some more pictures are below. I'm including some of the 1975 pictures next to their 2023 equivalents. Except where noted, all the pictures are from 2023.
Blue hair and rabbit with passer-by. Just off Regent Street Saint James
November 1975, Fuji R100 slide. Waterloo Place and the equestrian statue of Edward VII. My walking companion is leaning on the bollard with a cigarette.
The same spot, 2023
Ukraine flags over Horse Guards Parade, with military personnel. Grandstands seemed to be under construction, I imagine for the upcoming coronation.
Reds near Charing Cross
Spring flowers, Embankment Gardens
The classic tourist view towards Waterloo Bridge from Hungerford footbridge. Pano of 7 vertical format image stitched in PTGui.
Legs, Southbank
On reading: book stall, South Bank
On the phone: Millennium Bridge
Reflection, 1 Poultry
November 1975, Fuji R100 slide, Bank station and the Royal Exchange
Home-time in evening sun, Royal Exchange
Late afternoon sun, City. You can see how quiet the roads are, and even the number of commuters is still down on a Monday, post-pandemic.
Leadenhall Market
Mannequin, Leadenhall Market
Reflections and evening light. The green light on the building is sunlight reflecting from another building.
November 1975, Fuji R100 slide. Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast from close to London Bridge. This makes me think of the London of the Sweeney. The old warehouses were still there before succumbing to More London, and Tower Bridge was caked in the soot of London coal smoke.
April 2023, A similar view to Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast. Tower Bridge has been cleaned of soot. You’ll also notice that the right-hand (southern) Tower is partly in the shadow of the Shard, a skyscraper not dreamed of when the previous picture was made. Note also how the old warehouses have given way to the (now former) Mayor’s palace (aka the testicle) just to the right of HMS Belfast and the buildings of More London. To the very right, the previous warehouses have now become Hay’s Galleria.
November 1975, Tower of London from the south side of the Thames, probably around sunset
April 2023, Tower of London in evening light and a seemingly busier river.