Of course the Lake District is beautiful at this time of year - mountain views, spring growth, blossom everywhere - and if you’re lucky, blue skies and sunshine too. It is a photographer’s paradise and we all try to outdo each other to record the perfect image. This usually excludes anything human - such things as buildings (unless historic), car parks, traffic, pylons, wind farms, telegraph wires, litter - and sometimes the people too.

We are told most of us now live in cities. A recent trip to London provided some opportunities and photographic challenges in this very different environment. You can always take the easy view and get a moderately interesting shot.

Take, for instance, the wobbly footbridge slung between the north and south banks of the Thames. There’s always activity on the riverbank as the boats and launches trundle up and down the river while buskers serenade the crowds and icecream sellers do a brisk trade. Connecting the Tate Gallery at Bankside to St. Pauls, the footbridge has introduced a spectacular new photo opportunity as the metal lines of the bridge converge on Christopher Wren’s masterpiece.

Inside Tate Modern, a monolithic former power station, we take the lift to the top floor where you can catch a panoramic view of the London skyline for free. That is if you don’t indulge in a meal in the posh restaurant. Clusters of people sunning themselves on the grass below make a regularly spaced texture. We speculate whether anyone has done research into the optimum distance between family groups. Once vacated, spaces are quickly filled to the regulation density. Four windows near the top of the building echo the four tables at ground level. I was quite pleased with this image, its lit and shadowed areas contrasting with the solidity of the building, the pattern of the small groups of picnickers apparent.

The in-between floors in the Tate are areas where people congregate too, their movement contrasting with the massive pillars and bright red corporate seating. Tricky lighting, but I wanted to capture the timeline displayed above. I switched the flash off of course - useless really in such a large space. Also I did not want to draw attention to myself as I was trying to snap the whole thing - another use for the digital camera as a handy digital notebook.

A fast ‘film’ speed of 400 ISO, cloudy white balance and a solid wall at my back to steady me produced acceptable results. Plus, later, a little adjustment of the perspective in Photoshop to alter converging lines, remove some of the yellow hues and using unsharp mask in the filters, gently sharpen the final image. With an digital SLR, tripod, a lockable mirror and a long exposure would have pictured it better, of course.

What interests me about these public spaces is the contrast between structures, different materials and the occupants. My favourite shot from the whole trip was taken from the upper deck of a bus. (Get really close up to the window glass with the camera lens and turn off the flash if you want to do this). The traffic lights were red and I just saw it ...and snapped it.

The glass and steel of the lobby both reflect and reveal the surroundings. People swim through the image like fish in a tank. The lines of the floor grill and the yellow lines reflected in the bus window lead the eye in and out of the composition. Perfection, almost! Rodchenko and Popova, the Russian Constructivists who first linked fine art to graphic design, and experimented with photographic collages and images that were structural in nature, would have been pleased!