Churchill Arms Pub

A public tavern has stood on the site of The Churchill Arms since 1750. It is therefore one of the oldest continually running historic pubs in London. In the 1800s, Winston Churchill’s grandparents were regular visitors which then led to the re-naming of the pub in his honour after World War II. Today, there interior is adorned with Churchill memorabilia hanging from the walls. The pub’s renowned flower displays are so celebrated and well maintained that it has led to it being awarded a prize from the Chelsea Flower Show. Clearly the Churchill Arms was a pub that I had to photograph. However, photographing this pub posed a particularly complex problem.

I like being as close as possible to the corner pubs so as to enhance the perspective of the edges of the architecture. Alas the road The Churchill Arms is situated on – Kensington Church St – is a particularly busy thoroughfare. It proved fiendishly difficult to find a gap in the constant stream of traffic which I needed to make a long exposure photograph. The option of waiting until late evening or nighttime was not available to me as I needed to have people drinking and chatting outside, to add the human interest. Not to mention that after a certain hour the pub would close and the lights would be turned off.

So all I could do was to be patient and to very carefully run out in the middle of the road with the focus set, the exposure calculated, and the tilt shift lens positioned at its pre-determined setting. This I did repeatedly, in the hope that the required 10 second exposure time would be possible without an approaching car’s headlights ruining the image. Or the traffic forcing me to quickly back off to the safety of the pavement. It took two separate visits, and at least an hour or two each time of scuttling back and forward onto the road with my tripod in hand, to manage to get finally the image I wanted. This is not something I would want to, or recommend, ever doing again!