In the average week I get asked lots of times: ‘how you do that?’ So, here starts a new series of articles on that theme.

One of the reasons I carry all my gear, all of the time is so that I can seize any given opportunity that presents itself in front of me. Such versatility is probably storing up back problems for me in the future, given the weight of my camera bag. However, it’s worth the pain to always be in a position to capture a scene the way I think suits it best.

Last week I was out walking in the Eitai-bashi part of town with my son. Partly for family research purposes [my wife's ancestors first settle in Tokyo in that part of town] and partly to research some spots for forthcoming group lessons.

As usual I had been walking around with the 85mm lens on but as I left Joe playing on the swings in a playground close to the river and headed up onto the embankment wall, the most awesome scene opened up in front of me.

The skyscrapers of Toyosu make for an interesting vista at any time but the way the sun was bursting through the clouds was just so dramatic and it seemed it wouldn’t last for too long… so I had to act fast.

On went the 11-16mm f/2.8 lens and given the dynamic range of the landscape – bright sun and superb clouds but with the faces of the buildings in shadow – I was going to have to use a bracketed burst and HDR to get all of the atmosphere as my eye was seeing it.

HDR is a wonderful technique that suits these sorts of subjects: the ones where the eye can distinguish many levels of light but where the camera is never going to be able to capture more than a 6-stop band of brightness.

I established my base exposure by shooting on Aperture Priority mode, then switching to Manual and changing the shutter-speed a little to make it darker. Then I switched to bracketing mode and chose to shoot a five-frame burst, with each shot spaced one-stop apart.

I had no tripod so it was a question of using the wall to stabilise the camera and as further insurance against movement between the frames, choosing ‘Continous High [CH]‘ mode to fire the five frames inside of one second.

When I got the shots home and started blending them in Photomatix, it became obvious that the atmposphere was going to suit black and white more than colour as the colours were quite diffuse anyway and mono would help me get the most drama into the sky.

I ended up using a process that was as close to an Agfa 100 film I used to shoot, as it had the right level of contrast and fine grain. I added a slight touch of increased red sensitivity as well, to darken the blue sky and increase the separation with the clouds.

The square composition suited the huddle of skyscrapers and helped centre attention around the relationship between them and the bridge they seemed to be surrounding/protecting. That’s where the title sprang from.

Job done.