United Kingdom Millennial Bridge facing towards St Paul’s Cathedral.

This spot is called Millennium Bridge. I spent two cold and rainy days on this bridge photographing hundreds of people to gather story, drama and emotion shots.

It’s an excellent spot for shooting when there’s no sun and the skies are overcast and raining. As you can see it’s quite blustery on the bridge and with added rain and nearby structures such as St Paul’s it adds for an interesting photo.

Try shooting in the rain and wind. Ensure your kit is sealed lens and camera, most modern units are.

Cover any elements such as flash connectors with the appropriate shoes. Wet elements can cause lens errors to appear on your LCD camera display.

For windy and rainy/dull days set your camera to vivid mode. Shooting in colour look for vibrant colours such as people walking with red or yellow umbrellas, people in coloured rain macs, etc.

Try to avoid tripods. They’re not safe on the bridge unless you’re at the top or bottom end. Take plenty of batteries and lens drying/cleaning cloths. I’ve added a little more rain here in photo shop because my shutter speed was too slow.

Ideally set your ISO to high or keep it on auto. You need a wide aperture for these shots such as f/1.8-f/1.4. Shutter speed needs to be at either 1/30 160 or above 200-250 depending on your style. Experiment because it takes practice to get it right.

Take regular breaks. The TATE modern has a nice restaurant to eat and warm up. I took my flask and ate in there.

Manual focus is challenging hence I kept mine on auto. Practice with both though. Flash is ideal too to provide lean against a solid service if winds are strong. This helps avoid camera shake. Always shoot in raw. While my lit is weather sealed I prefer a rain cover. It reduces mould and damp ingress.

I throughly enjoyed these two days despite suffering frostbite and stage 1. Hypothermia, it was incredibly cold but worth it. I’ve more photos to look at. The coloured ones where gusts of winds blew umbrellas up were good shots.

I traveled from Southall Station on the Elizabeth Line to Farringdon. Changed to the Circle line, one stop to Blackfriars then walked across the bridge. Busses are available too. However you risk wasting time and your kit maybe damaged due to cramping.