PHOTOGRaphy inside canary wharf shopping mall
Between the Canary Wharf DLR station and 1 Canada Square is a shopping mall under a glass dome. It’s on four levels built around a circular atrium-come-escalator-well, with a number of eating establishments on the top floor. It’s one of my favourite escalators in London for photography, but it demands a very wide angle lens to do it justice.
Canary Wharf Inside Photography – Choice of Lens
Most of the images in my gallery below are taken with a fisheye lens which is great for this subject as the curved shape of the building resonates with the inherent curvature and distortion of the image as rendered by the lens. I shoot with a Sony APS-C camera and I have a lovely little Samyang 8mm fisheye for these occasions; it’s fairly inconspicuous which is a plus point. I also find that HDR is generally a necessity because of the bright lights involved in most compositions. How you process the HDR set depends on how you wish to portray the scene.
Canary Wharf Inside Photography – Security
Some of the images were taken about ten years ago. Since then the security at Canary Wharf seems to have been tightened somewhat regarding photography inside the shopping area and they are not too keen on big black cameras with interchangeable lenses. A few years ago I was taking photos around these escalators trying out my new mobile’s camera, quite openly; after a while I realised I was being followed by a couple of security personnel. I stopped and we had a chat. I explained that I was an amateur photographer, belonged to a camera club and was taking pictures to enter a competition. I showed them the sort of thing. We had a very pleasant chat about camera clubs and they wished me well. It might not have gone the same way if I had been using a full frame DSLR! And of course, tripods are an absolute no-no.
Mike Hawkridge Photography 
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