St Paul's Cathedral - London

St Paul's Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge - London

St Paul's Cathedral stands on Ludgate Hill, which is the highest point in the city of London. The Cathedral which stand's today is actually the fifth "St Paul's" which has been built on the same site. At 111m in height, it was London's tallest building until the 1960's. The funeral of Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill, jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria and the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana were all held here.

Read on for more images and info.

St Paul's Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge - London

The photographs with Millennium Bridge in the foreground were taken from the opposite bank of the Thames, near the Globe Theatre (which will be covered in a future post). Unfortunately I was unable to photograph the interior of the church as photography is not allowed.

The current St Paul's was built by Sir Christopher Wren, who started designing it in 1668 and was inspired by St Peters Basilica in Rome. Although only one dome is visible, the structure consists of three domes. The inner dome provides the aesthetically pleasing interior. The outer dome serves no structural purpose but again, is good to look at. Between these two domes sits a third structural cone which supports the apex structure and the exterior dome. The stairs which lead to the top of the dome runs between them.

St Paul's Cathedral - London

The inner dome contains three galleries, The internal whispering gallery, The external stone gallery and the external golden gallery. The climb to the top is not the easiest, especially if you are claustrophobic, but the view from the top is worth it.

View from the top of St Paul's - London

The tombs of Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington can be found in the crypt. The crypt also serves as a chapel for the order of the British Empire and the Treasury. A number of valuable artefacts have been stored in the cathedral over the years but a robbery in 1810 took almost all of the remaining artefacts.        

St Paul's Cathedral - London

Getting to St Pauls is pretty easy as there is an underground station right near the church. We visited the area twice while we were in London. Firstly when we went to see the Cathedral and climb the dome adn secondly in the night when we went to the Globe to watch "A comedy of errors". after the performance we wondered around the opposite bank of the Thames and the cathedral taking photographs of it.  It was annoying to have to carry the tripod and camera with me throughout the evening but I'm quite happy with the photographs so I guess it was worth it.

St Paul's Cathedral from across the Thames - London

All the images in this post were captured with a Canon 7D and the 24-105mm lens. A Tripod was also used for the night shots, which were long exposures.

Views from the verandah

I hadn't been up to our place near Kandy, in central Sri Lanka, for over three years and I was determined to go up there for a couple of days in January, when I was last at home. Read on for more images and details of how they were taken.

Our place is up in the hills beyond the Peradeniya University. It's fairly high up from the nearest village and  therefore we don't have too many neighbours (thank God). Above us is a forest reserve which is home to Black Eagles, Wild Boar, Muntjac Deer and an abundance of bird life. Needless to say, I love getting up there and spending a few days away from the city. 

From the house we see layer after layer of mountain ranges stretching away for miles. Some of the prominent land marks that you can see include Adams Peak, Bible Rock, the Mahaweli and the Kotmale power station. I've been planning to create a panoramic image of the view but I don't have a decent wide angle lens to capture the required images... yet. The best time to photograph the view, in my opinion, is very early morning or at sunset. Mist rolls into the valleys during the night and early morning, and at these times, only the peaks of the mountains are visible. The early morning light is great for photography. The whole place looks like a chain of islands in a massive, swirling sea. During sunset, the sky is stained with shades of orange, pink and deep purple-blue. The light at that time of the day defines and separates the different mountain ranges.      

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't the best while we were up there in mid January. It either rained in the evenings or was just very gloomy. The clouds were fairly low and as a result the sunsets were not as vibrant as usual. However, the dark clouds with the sun shining through did make an interesting sky line. Since the light didn't really add anything to the images I decided to convert them into black and whites. 

I'm still not sure if these images "work" or not so please let me know what you think of them in the comments.

Both images were taken with the Canon 7D and the 100-400mm lens.