Spring light in London

The sunsets over the City have started to shift as we move into spring.

Commuter watching the sunset along the Thames. March 2026

Instead of the stronger colours we often see earlier in the year, the light recently has been softer and more pastel. Pinks, mauves and peach tones have been spreading across the sky in the evenings, giving the skyline a very different feel.

That softer light changes the way the buildings sit against the sky. The glass towers around the City start to pick up those colours and reflect them back across the skyline. The Thames plays its part as well. It acts like a long strip of moving mirror, pulling those colours down into the water and stretching them through the frame.

It also changes how I approach photographing the skyline.

At this time of year I often slow things down a little. I’ll stop the lens down to a smaller aperture, keep the ISO low, and allow the shutter speed to run a bit longer. A slightly longer exposure helps smooth the water on the Thames and starts to pull the reflections of the buildings and the sky out of the river.

The surface of the water becomes less busy and more part of the composition. The colour in the sky and the glow from the buildings start to spread across the river, bringing the water and the skyline a little closer together in the image.

You don’t need very long exposures for this either. Just enough to calm the water and allow the reflections to appear.

Spring evenings also stretch the shooting window slightly. The city lights begin to appear while there is still colour left in the sky, and the best colours often show themselves just after the sun has dropped below the horizon.

The skyline itself evolves slowly, but it doesn’t really change much from one day to the next. The light, however, is never the same twice at this time of year. Sometimes you simply get lucky and capture something that is unique to that one evening.