09.13.26: It’s gotta be London

‍There are certain scenes that make a location easily identifiable.

‍The Eiffel Tower? It’s Paris. The Empire State Building? It’s New York. The Washington Monument? It’s Washington, D.C. The Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower)? It’s Chicago.

‍In London, there are numerous features that, when used in a photograph, make the location obvious. There’s Big Ben, of course. And there’s the red phone booths, the red double-decker buses, the black English taxis, the iconic London Underground logo.

‍This photo just cries out “London.”

‍I was in London on business a number of years ago and had time to walk around with my camera one afternoon. I was walking south on Parliament Street toward Great George Street, planning to visit the area around Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, when I passed an entrance to the London Underground, commonly known as “The Tube,” the city's subway system. I thought it would be good to add another photo of the London Underground to my files. 

‍As I stepped around to get the angle I wanted, I noticed that Big Ben was in the background.

‍Perfect.

‍But as I clicked the shutter button, a bus rolled through the scene and blocked the lower portion.

‍My initial reaction was something like “crap, that’s not what I wanted.” I took a few more shots that showed pedestrians at street level before moving on.

‍When I returned home and started sorting through the photos from the trip, I was intrigued by the photo with the bus. I was using a relatively slow shutter speed (1/60th of a second), so the movement of the bus created a bit of motion blur. And I liked having three London icons — Big Ben, the Underground logo, and a red double-decker bus — in one shot.

‍The Underground logo, known as a roundel and previously referred to as the bull’s eye, has existed since 1908. The roundel is the logo for Transport for London, the government body responsible for most public transportation in the city, and versions are used for a variety of below-ground and above-ground city transport. The version used for the Underground is the most recognizable.