Towards Iselworth Ait, River Thames

We had spent the Spring bank holiday at Syon Park, ostensibly for a foodies festival, which was interesting to a degree, and bizarre to another. Food stalls, a scattering of charities and food delivery box services, a stage with a rather eclectic variety of music, just getting into some nice saxophone stuff as we were leaving, and some talks tents - someone from bake-off making black forest gateau we stopped to listen to by chance. All in all a rather strange event I felt somewhat alien in, but the cannoli were good that we'd taken out to investigate Syon a bit further.

At the end of the day we walked down to the Thames after leaving the park, past a very cobbled together church that they seemed to have point-blank refused to completely rebuild, just repairing what hadn't yet fallen down, so it had a spire tower feeling completely out of keeping and out of place to the rest of the red brick building.

A set of stairs led down from a small parking area to a stony bank of the river, I've seen in the past some really interesting photography from such-like Thames river banks and really wanted to see what I could find, after shooting sort of wildly about (not really hitting anything in the end I liked) I decided I'd try shoot a super-wide pano-esque shot with the conversion lens I've got. Out towards the headland of Iselworth Ait and the river splitting over it, down past what looked like old ship-building yards on one side, and the backend of Kew gardens on the other. I'm really glad I took so many shots trying to make sure I'd matched the exposure as best I could, so I could find at the other side a pair to produce the pano I had in mind. As it turned out it was even more so a good idea as the brightness in the built-up side meant I could use the somewhat bracketed exposures I had captured to pull together this panorama meaning that I could blend the tone together nicely.

The sun was right in the wrong place really for what I had wanted to try to capture, but I think in the end I was able to capture the scene as it felt, rather than what I had had in mind. The overbearing brightness of the early summer sun still burning hot towards the end of the day. The person stood at the edge of the river bank (who, in a way, had been part of the initial draw down to the bank to take some photographs), embodies for me the sense of a pause, and the 'distance' I like to put into most of my photographs from people, the separation of the others in the scene, people, I guess, taking a moment from the pub just out of view. Creating the divide between the colours and definition of the trees on the banks of Kew, and the blinding brightness of the haze over the town and civilisation, seemingly decaying boats obscured by flares, and a tiny smudge of an aeroplane eluding to a progress, technological in nature, holding more people than might fit into the pub the families on the banks are taking a break from, but crushed into a tube.

I find the perspective interesting, the shifting feelings from side to side evading the pinning down of any particular narrative. There is in it, my memories of my day, and simultaneously containing a philosophy of perspective, the real and the imagined, a point in time to return to in space.

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Canon 400D | 28mm + 0.8x Wide Conversion Lens | 5 photograph composite panorama