Ed O’Keeffe Photography

Millennium Bridge & St. Paul’s Cathedral, London

I have photographed this scene before and was really happy with the results, but there were always going to be people in the way. Last Sunday morning, I got the Tube down to St. Paul’s Cathedral and walked across the Millennium bridge - it was still as busy with people as ever. This time I had my tripod and super wide angle lens and if you compare what you see below (the original first attempt taken last May) with the new version above, I think you will agree my latest photo is much better. But, I hear you ask, where have all the people gone?

Being on a tripod there is no movement of the camera, therefore the only thing that moves is the pedestrians. So by taking half a dozen photographs, not moving the camera but just waiting till the people move themselves around or out of the frame at different areas of the composition I am left with a range of images that have all the detail of the bridge but the people moving around. Using an advanced feature in Adobe Photoshop I can then tell the program to look through all six images and remove the parts of the image that change from picture to picture (i.e. the people) and then I am left with a people free photograph - genius. That’s not me saying that I am the genius here - I learnt how to use this technique recently from Fredrick Van who has a great video tutorial on removing crowds over his blog.