The colours of London by night

With the recent Olympics in London, many of the buildings and bridges around the river had some great lighting by night.  This produced some fantasic colours around the river which I thought would be a good opportunity to introduce a small group to night and low light photography.  

The principles of low light photography are actually quite easy to learn so long as you've grasped the basics of shutter speed and can use your camera on semi-auto or manual mode.  A tripod and a remote shutter release are normally needed for this type of photography to keep the camera dead still during the long exposures.  Although just for a bit of a trial, I took the few photos below while still holding the camera by hand - just using a (very) steady hand, a wide aperture and a lens with a good image stabiliser.