Street Manual

A field guide for street photographers.

by Luke Carey

London Locations45 minutes

Lloyd's Building, London

Lloyd's Building, 1 Lime Street, EC3M

Richard Rogers' inside-out masterpiece on Lime Street: lifts, ducts, staircases and steel bolted to the outside of the building, all polished pipework and hard industrial geometry. Grade I listed and unlike anything around it. A gift for anyone who likes strong lines and metal against sky.

Best time: hard side light morning or late afternoon to rake across the metalwork. Blue hour, when the building is lit blue and the steel glows.

Look for: abstract crops of the pipes and stairs, the external lifts moving, and a small figure at the base to show the scale. Reflections of Lloyd's warped in the glass of the Cheesegrater opposite.

Camera Settings

Any. Stop down to f/8 for edge-to-edge sharpness on the geometry; expose for the highlights on the steel.

The Assignment

Make three abstract frames of the metalwork where you cannot tell how big the building is, then one that reveals it.

Free Course