absolutely stunning .. as a thumb its awesome .. on opening its even better .. !!
i love the black and white treatment and slow shutter speed effect ... wonderful .. :)
Thanks for all the comments and kind words ... I've honored to have made the front page of a FS, let alone HM (and particularly with a B&W image).
@Giles_UK -- The Big Stopper is a Lee 4x4" (100x100mm) 10-stop drop-in ND filter.
@HarveyG -- The coppers were everywhere, and a pair of them watched me from the bridge the entire day (I was in this spot, taking shots off and on from early afternoon until after dusk). I couldn't believe they didn't come down and say something given what an issue that is in London these days. I also shot a few 5min+ exposures from the top of the bridge, both toward Big Ben/Parliament and The Eye. The Met never bothered me once, despite being all around (and always nearby). :)
@Bear -- If you pull the image down into PS and apply some grid lines, you'll find the verticals are perfectly vertical (save for maybe the last couple toward the left, which are only off by a touch). The horizontals suffer a bit from perspective distortion, since the parliament building is such a long structure and I've taken a bit of an off-angle POV from this spot (because I wanted Westminster Bridge in frame, as seen). That leaves it a bit "pinched" on the left side of the frame. I did apply a slight bit of correction, both in terms of barrel distortion via PT Lens (was only minor anyway) and manual perspective correction in PS CS5 for both verticals and horizontals. I resisted over-correction though, as the curve in the building along the Thames is complimentary (IMHO) to the curve in the bridge ... and I think that's what is giving it a sense of being stilted. *shrug*