Welcome to 2012!

03/01/12

Welcome to 2012! Happy New Year to everyone who visits www.iainproudfoot.com and to all my followers! I wish you all happiness and prosperity in 2012!

I spent the start of 2012 (the second day of January in fact) on the embankment beside the Thames Barrier (Wiki Info), at the Woolwich Reach stretch of the River Thames.

You may already be familiar with this engineering marvel and London icon (which is situated upstream from the Thames Estuary and the North Sea, straddling the river between the much urbanised areas of New Charlton and Silver Town), as it is a fascinating, striking landmark.

It is a series of rotating gates that were emplaced in the early 1980's to control the water levels of the river, and to counter exceptionally high tides. The rotating mechanisms are housed in rather slick looking ‘silver’ plate shells, which look like some kind of gigantic, nautical isopods.

I pitched up on site at about 6:30 am, on the New Charlton side of the Thames Barrier, close the installation’s Visitors’ Centre. I had pre-researched my photo-visit and knew that being there at that time meant that I had one and half hours to anticipate the sunrise at 8:02 am – plenty of time to set up, compose, and take my shot! I also knew that the tide would be at its highest level and that the sun was going to rise from a south-easterly direction (more or less behind the Barrier). I hoped that the combination of these factors would make for a good image.

I positioned myself a short walk west of the Barrier, set up my equipment, and then waited for the light! About to twenty minutes before the sun rose above the horizon, I took the attached steely blue photograph of the view before me. My first photograph of 2012 – the first of many!

Technical Details: Aperture f/13.0, Shutter Speed 6 seconds, ISO 200, Focal Length 16mm.

Please visit my 'latest work' gallery.

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