Above Campus.
Some images get used more than others and this set from a secret location high above the South Kensington Campus has certainly seen some action.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
For a long time, I had wanted to get into this location to get this series, so once I had access I was up there like a shot. The resulting images have been used extensively: from the log in page on any College computer, the homepage of the Asset Library, the Postgraduate Prospectus cover, the Graduation Programme cover – the list goes on.
So what did it look like up there?
I’ve used a very small aperture for these images to give me a meaty depth of field for front to back focus. This makes for longer exposure times hence the tripod visible to the left in the image. The night shot for example is a five second exposure.
The small aperture also means that the light coming through the aperture blades is very sharp, causing visible stars in the lamps on the image, for example the red lights on the horizon and the lights on the roof in the foreground. The stars in your image will have more or less spikes depending on how many aperture blades there are in your lens. Using a shallower depth of field would mean these would slowly become more rounded as the blur or “bokeh” increases.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
The panorama shot that appears on the Image Library homepage, shown below, which was also on display on a 2 metre print at the Heroes exhibition, is shot slightly differently. This is a stitched composite image of a series of photographs and the original is massive.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London
This image has been shot from the same location in the summer and has been used on the College computer log in pages. These images have also been used on our print collateral.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London
The dusk image featured on the cover of the Postgraduate Graduation Programme.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
The image is used here in conjunction with an image from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering field trip shoot, which is covered in this blog post here.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
The night image featured on the cover of the Postgraduate Prospectus.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
The image was also very well received on social media, receiving over 200 likes and lot’s of engagement on the College’s official channels.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London [Click Image to expand]
The image also regularly featured on the College Homepage.
Image © Thomas Angus / Imperial College London
Learn more about shooting in the dark
Watch a short video exploring shooting at night and in low light on Lynda.com (College users have free access to Lynda courses)
Read an article here about the stars created by aperture blades