I’ve been down in London this past week, taking a break from work and doing all the tourist things I never had time to do when I lived and worked there. This time, it was the turn of the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels. We also went on one of the free Yeoman Tours at the Tower, which was excellent and highly recommended.
As well as visiting the Tower of London, we wanted to go to the Sky Gardens on top of the Walkie-Talkie building. While these are free, you need to book a couple of weeks in advance, and the tickets go as soon as they become available. Unfortunately, that prevented our visit because we didn’t get any tickets. We did check to see if there were any walk-in spaces, but they were packed.
That’s when my wife’s friend said she knew of another rooftop garden on Fenchurch Street, and we didn’t need to book. It’s called the Garden at 120 and is well worth visiting. That’s where I took the following shot of The Shard.
I shot this soon after sunset using an Olympus 12-60 lens at 50mm. It’s a handheld exposure of 1/15 second at f/6.3 and ISO400. The image was a little noisy in the sky, so I ran the RAW file through DxO PureRAW, which did an excellent job. I then processed the image in Lightroom, followed by the Nik Collection.
The next shot was from a little earlier in the evening. It shows what a great view of London you get from the Gardens at 120, and you get to include the Walkie-Talkie building in your shot. It reminds me of New York a bit, where the best view isn’t from the Empire State Building but from the Top of the Rock. That’s because you get to include the Empire State, which you can’t if you are standing on it.
This image was also captured on the Olympus EM5 Mark 3 with the Leica 12-60 lens at 12mm. It’s a 1/60 second exposure at f/6.3 and ISO200. The RAW file was processed in DxO PureRAW before being processed in Lightroom, followed by Exposure X7.
I hope you like the shots, and if you are ever in London, I recommend visiting these gardens.
The Lightweight Photographer 
Fabulous. London is so full of photographic oppportunity.
Thank you