Golden Light on the Tower

When I was at St James Park here two days ago, I missed photographing something that deserved some clicks: namely, the golden light of post-sunrise on the one face of the clock tower. I had missed that shot because I had been too wrapped up taking other photos, which you saw here. It wasn't that I didn't take a shot at that time but that I was late to it and missed the best light.

So, that was the main intent when I returned on the next morning. It wasn't my only intention, and I did grab some other images whilst I was waiting for the light, but I made sure to keep my eye on the tower.

On location, I checked in with Siri for sunrise time. She told me that it would be 6:34, so I had 15 minutes to take other photos in the interim. I will post them separately, maybe tomorrow.

Once the sun officially rises, it does taken awhile for it to clear objects such as trees on the horizon. Then it had to get high enough to reach the height of the tower. That is why at 6:38, 4 minutes after the rising, the sun hadn't yet reached the tower. You can see, however, that the sky was no longer very dark.

It took another 7 minutes after the above image and a full 11 minutes after sunrise, for the light to reach the tower at 6:45.

I changed my position and 3 minutes later I got a little more of the sunny side and less of the shady side. The light had also improved even more.

It was even better two minutes later.

Finally, I decided to ignore the flag. I am not sure that was a good choice overall, but I think it does better  highlight the main thing that I was trying to photograph – the golden light. This was my final photo at ~6:52.

Notes

1. It was breezy so in all of the flag photos, I tried to wait until I could see most of the flag, but I would take a few snaps, just to be sure.

2. The flag is not crisp in these photos, for the exposures range from 0.4 seconds to 1/6 second. I did take some photos at higher shutter speed the freeze the flag better, but in the end at my computer, I couldn't be bothered. I just picked the photos that suited me.

3. I do find it difficult to be precise in lining up the tripod, especially with a heavy lens on it, so in most photos I cut off the windows below the clock. Cutting off objects like that isn't a good thing to do, and there are more expensive tripod heads with gears that allow one to be more precise. As for me, I will just have to exercise more care. For these reasons, I think the third photo is best overall. It has good light, but there is also space below the windows.

4. I wish, there were a more interesting sky, but I did get the main thing that I intended – the light. If the sky had been more interesting, the light possibly would not have been.