Welcome ladies and Gentlemen to The Smoke. The last time the capital saw this much smoke was during the Great Fire of London in 1666 and I can tell you back then it wasn’t caused by tortured rubber on scorched asphalt. The Smoke seen here today was thanks to Drift Allstars. If you follow me on facebook then you will know that I pretty fond of the event that took place in Stratford, London. However I want to show you some of my favourite shots from the weekend and why it was such a good weekend for me. During the course of the weekend I decided to change my shooting style a little bit. I was armed with a 300mm f/4 L IS USM lens and for the most part of Saturday, it did not leave my camera. This meant that I was shooting with slightly faster shutter speeds than I normally would use. Consequentially I ended up with far more “keepers” than normal. So when I returned on that Sunday I thought that as I had covered a lot of the “safe” shots that I wanted, I could spend the day dicking about. I therefore proceeded to use all the lenses I had with me which was my trusty 50mm f/1.4 USM – my beloved 135mm f/2 L USM and the 300mm f/4 L IS USM which rent from Lens Locker. I also experimented a lot more with shutter speeds using super fast shutter speeds and some super slow shutter speeds. I think the highest I went to was 1/1250th of a second and down to 1/10th of a second. As a result I have a lot of shots that look very different and it was kind of like re-discovering photography for me. Trying new things out, making mistakes and learning. I will definitely be doing it again next time!
