Westminster Summer Daylight Countdown Timer

A red bus, blurred, doing what red buses do. Big Ben behind it, correct and calm, clock face white as a dinner plate. Westminster Bridge with its green ironwork and its lamps in a row. This is the most photographed view in London and I took it anyway, from the pavement, with about forty other people, because sometimes the obvious shot is obvious for a reason. It was a warm day. The river smelled like the river. Somebody was selling roasted nuts from a cart and somebody else was shouting about a boat tour. I like this frame because of the blur. Everything else is sharp, stone and sky and clock, and then a London bus smears through the bottom corner like the city refusing to sit still for its portrait. That is the honest version, really. You can photograph the buildings. The queue at the security gate snakes along the pavement, and the ice cream van parked by the bridge is doing better business than any of the souvenir stalls combined. But the thing that makes London London is always moving, always late, always red, always gone before you get the focus right.