Oxford City Centre photo walk
Oxford city centre, on Tuesday, the 10th of September
I had Enjoyed the TV series Morse and subsequently Lewis, both which had been set in Oxford . So Oxford was a city I had always wanted to visit but for some reason had never been to. Finally I planned a visit to walk around some of the well-known points of interest in the city centre.
I had checked the weather and it looked as if it was going to be dry from mid morning to early afternoon, it cloudy with sunny intervals.
This is my first visit to Oxford. I didn’t know really what to expect or how far apart things were. In my mind this was more a first exploratory visit. I fully intend to come back and visit other areas of the city centre and revisit one or two areas, when there may be less tourists and less building work going on.
The photographic challenges were typically the lighting, and although cloudy it was still very bright, and secondly the number of visitors and tourists were surprising given a midweek day out of holiday season. So constructing an image without lots of people was going to be difficult.
I had done some research on travelling to Oxford by train including parking locally would’ve cost around £50. I chose to drive which was quicker but I used the park and ride Bus Service. I turned off the A40 at Oxford and left my car at Thornhill park-and-ride and took the number 400 bus into the city centre. Not really knowing the area and having had a brief look at a map I chose to start at the Carfax Tower and walk around a number of the key areas of the city centre. These were, Carfax Tower, Broad Street, Bodleian Library, Radcliffe Camera, Bridge of Sighs and the Indoor Market.
I had chosen to travel light and had only taken the one camera lens. This was a 50 mm equivalent lens. I found this quite restrictive to use for two reasons. Firstly you’re quite close to what you want to photograph and the field of view was in many cases too narrow. I could not step back to get the composition that I wanted. The second reason was as it was so crowded I sometimes wanted to have a longer reach and be tighter on a subject so I could shoot through or eliminate many of people walking around.
The main takeaway for me for my next visit is to have more flexibility on wide and telephoto lens options.
Overall, an enjoyable first visit to Oxford, a beautiful city centre and definitely worth returning and exploring further.
