Aspen Way Panorama

The view from East India DLR train station

This is East London looking over towards the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. I love these views with light trails from cars indicating the movement and dynamism of traffic. This road is Aspen Way which passes the northern section of Canary Wharf (or the Docklands). It is one of the major roads leading east to west across London. The last colours of sunset are visible in the sky, I wanted to wait until night fall in order to achieve the drama of bright light trails in this image.

The technique

My usual technique of doing a series of vertical shots to later stitch together into my ultra high definition panoramas was not possible here.  The light trails would have been too disjointed with too many separate sections blended together. I therefore had to resort to another panoramic photography technique of using an architectural tilt shift lens. With this I could just simple take three laterally shifted shots. This ensured that the highway with light trails would have been captured entirely into one frame, guaranteeing continuity of the streaks of light. This would not be possible without the use of an exceedingly high resolution medium format camera; in my instance the 100MP of my Fujifilm camera and a 30mm T/S lens ensured that the resolution produced remained sufficiently high. This camera and this this technique allows me to match using the extremely high resolution as I would normally expect from my vertical rotational panoramas captured on my Nikon.

This technique also of course maintained the geometrical purity and integrity of the image, since the lens itself did not move during the three separate shots. I felt this was especially important to avoid any distortions in any area near the camera, in this case the tracks of the Docklands Light Railway at right.

I also tried to get some light trails of approaching or departing trains, but this proved impossible as the station itself is built high up above the highway on stilts, and it shook quite noticeably when a train arrived!

Available as a limited edition fine art print on museum paper, or framed in a variety of options.

see a black and white version of this image here