Southwark Bridge
Southwark Bridge is the quiet one. It crosses the Thames between Cannon Street on the City side and Bankside, a short walk from the Globe and Tate Modern, and it carries less traffic than any other road bridge in central London. It is also handsome. The present bridge opened in 1921, designed by the architect Ernest George with the engineer Basil Mott. Five steel arches, painted yellow and green, spring from granite piers with small stone turrets at each end.
It replaced John Rennie’s bridge of 1819, a cast-iron structure with three enormous spans, the centre one the longest cast-iron arch ever built. Rennie’s bridge was a toll bridge and never made money, which is why it stayed so empty. Dickens knew it well, and it is the Iron Bridge that Little Dorrit walks across when she wants somewhere quiet to think.
From a height the bridge is easy to place. It sits between the Millennium Bridge and the railway bridge into Cannon Street, and the yellow paint of the arches picks it out from the grey of the river even in poor light. From the top of The Shard its five arches are the easiest of the bridges to count.
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London Stilled in Evening
London’s brief stillness in the minutes after rush hour has ended before the evening’s activity truly begins. The panorama takes in most of London’s major landmarks from The Shard to Canary Wharf, The City of London with St Paul’s Cathedral, with the Thames dividing the city and the Tate Tower bisecting the image. Fine Art…
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Shard London Bridge Summit
This 360 image was captured at the top of the Shard London Bridge, 310m above London, on the night of the student protests in November 2010. You can see the police helicopters hovering over London above the demonstration. Technically this was a very difficult shoot, I was on the crane at the top of the…
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Shard View at Night Panorama
I captured this panorama of the London skyline at night from the Shard at around the 35th floor, whilst the building was still under construction. The Shard’s height has given me the opportunity to show the London cityscape from a new angle, looking down on the Thames as it snakes through the city from London…
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The Shard London Bridge – Blue Hour
The Shard is one of London’s most exciting buildings. It was completed in 2012, then becoming the tallest building in the European Union. I shot views from the Shard for the developer, and the sheer height of the building has made it one of the most exciting series of cityscapes I have worked on –…