The Reflection

I’d been down at the Barbican, camera in hand, spending a few hours exploring the play of shadow and light against its brutalist surroundings. It’s a place I return to often – the concrete, the lines, the hidden corners. As the afternoon wore on, the clouds began to break apart, letting shafts of light fall in ways that transformed the space.

I thought about moving on, perhaps down towards St Paul’s. There’s a shopping centre nearby that I’ve used before as a foreground, with interesting lines that can lead the eye perfectly towards the cathedral. I’ve been working this area for months now, chasing that “perfect shot,” and on this day the light was developing beautifully. At first, I was tempted to hold out for a Thames sunset, but then I noticed the clouds framing St Paul’s in a way I couldn’t ignore.

St Paul’s in Reflection
OM5, Lumix 14mm f2.5, 1/1600sec @f4, iso 200

I started further back, composing with some leading lines, but just as I was about to move on, something caught my eye. Near the glass roof that shelters the escalators from the lower ground floor, I spotted a reflection that looked promising. To capture it properly, I needed to stretch the camera over a barrier and line everything up just right. I always find it tricky to judge straight horizons using the LCD screen at an angle, so I took my time, adjusting carefully until it felt right.

Back home, when I first opened the RAW file in Lightroom, the image didn’t strike me as anything special.  The first impression can feel flat. But I’ve learned that if I let an image sit for a few days, it matures, almost like a fine wine or cheese. Coming back with fresh eyes makes all the difference. This time, a few tweaks to contrast and colour sliders began to reveal the photograph I’d felt when I pressed the shutter.

Normally, I avoid Photoshop – it’s not in my comfort zone – but for this one I had to break my own rule. A couple of small distractions needed removing, and it felt worth it. Some might say that isn’t “pure photography,” but for me this is art, not documentation. An image doesn’t have to be a literal record of what was there. It should, instead, capture how it felt to stand there, it’s something I believe wholeheartedly.

Back in Lightroom, I worked on balancing the sky and the reflection until they felt almost like a mirror image. When I finally shared the photograph on social media, a TV colleague commented that it reminded him of the old Thames Television logo from the ’80s. I hadn’t thought of that connection myself, but once he said it, I couldn’t unsee it – and I rather liked the idea.