First time out making a video in London since lockdown - sunrise at the O2 and Canary Wharf

Sunrise at the O2 - photo by Loren’s London

On Monday morning I woke at 3am. I hadn’t set the alarm, so that worked out well. The reason I needed to be awake so early was that I wanted to film and take photos of the sunrise over the dome of the O2. This was going to be my first time out making a video since mid March, almost 4 months. After so long, I felt a bit nervous. The weather was in my favour though. The forecast showed sunshine and when I looked out of the window, although it was still dark, there was a beautiful full moon against the dark blue sky and it did look as if there would be a nice day ahead.

I arrived at the point on the Thames overlooking the O2 just after 5am. Perfect! The sun was just starting to rise. If anyone’s been to the O2 recently you’ll know that the new buildings are slowly encroaching on every side. The days of being able to get a shot of the full dome from side to side have gone and more buildings are on the way so it’ll become more and more covered. No matter, the sun cast a nice orange/golden glow behind the roof and that was what I’d hoped to capture. No-one else was around so early in the morning and it was lovely and peaceful. The birdsong was louder than the traffic.

After lingering for a little while and taking some video I then moved on to walk along the dock towards Canary Wharf and on to the west side of the Isle of Dogs. I didn’t come away with any shots that I really loved and some of my video was shaky. I think I was too concerned with trying to fit in the whole walk and I didn’t take enough time to make the best compositions. This is a learning process though so I’m happy that I achieved what I set out to do and made the whole video within 3 days.

Today after I’ve written this blog, I’m going to search for a new tripod with a fluid video head and look towards improving my video skills for the next one. More and more I realise that good photography is about time. Either spending time studying your camera and your techinical skills so that you can work fast when you have to, or time taken to take photos of the same scene over and over to get the perfect angle or the perfect light, or time taken taken to find the best composition for a new scene. Patience truly is a virtue within photography. I need to cultivate more of it!

Here’s a link to the video Sunrise Photography at the O2 and Canary Wharf