Location, Location (part 2)

A further exploration of the joys of photographing the toys in the original Sherlock locations.

Taking photos of toys in the middle of London involves some indignities. Trafalgar Square, through which Sherlock and John walk in The Blind Banker, is a busy place, full of tourists, street artists, office workers, police and shoppers. In order to show the location properly,  I needed to have Nelson’s Column clearly in the picture, but to focus on the toys I needed the camera to be low. This meant that I was lying on a step in one of the busiest places in London to take the picture, and getting some very strange looks. Even in a city full of eccentrics, where all sorts of behaviour is smiled upon, I probably looked a bit odd. As always with these pictures, the differences in distance between the background and foreground also caused problems – I could get the Column in focus…

… or the toys in focus. Obviously, Sherlock and John are at the centre of the picture and they had to be clearly defined, as in the final picture:

Turning the viewpoint round, so that the two of them are looking at the National Gallery, was even more complicated. The top of the steps was even more crowded than the rest of Trafalgar Square.

 Luckily the original showed a crowded scene, but several of my attempts at the picture include people giving me disgruntled or questioning looks, and getting the angle right was surprisingly hard under the circumstances!

It was slightly breezy and the toys kept falling off the step and had to be replaced. This explains why, when the final photo is compared with the previous published picture, Sherlock and John have mysteriously swapped places on their way up the step!

Of course, when Sherlock says he wants to consult an expert on painting, he isn’t actually thinking of anyone working in the National Gallery. Instead, he takes John round the back of the building to meet Raz, who is a graffiti artist. Trying to locate the scene when Sherlock and Raz run away, leaving John to be arrested, proved more difficult than expected. With my (very patient) friend Lucy, with whom I was going to the theatre that evening (Aidan Turner in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, if anyone’s interested), I walked twice round the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery and failed to find the place.

As far as possible, I like Toylocked scenes to take place in the right location, so we eventually chose a doorway at the back of the National Gallery (thanks for the action photo, Lucy!):

John’s tiny tins of paint are doll-sized drinks cans with black, silver and chequered masking tape around them, and Raz’s bag is a Playmobil suitcase covered in masking tape. And he really is standing behind the National Gallery!

Later in the same episode, Raz takes Sherlock and John to see an example of the Michigan Yellow paint which has appeared in some graffiti in the skate park on the South Bank. Taking a photograph here aroused some interest in one or two of the skaters and one of them asked what I was doing. When I explained about my Toylocked project, he told me he thought it was “wicked”, and I carried on:

As I write today’s blog, it is New Year’s Eve. The last Toylocked photo for today is therefore Irene Adler receiving a New Year’s message from Sherlock in A Scandal in Belgravia. Here I have to make a confession: there have been two versions of this picture and the first one was wrong. I was in London one evening, with the toys in my bag, and I thought I’d take advantage of my proximity to St Paul’s Cathedral to take this photo. I didn’t check the scene exactly. I precariously balanced Irene on top of one of the black, white and red City of London bollards on Ludgate Hill and got a good shot, showing the dome of St Paul’s floodlit against an evening sky.  This shot was posted on 31 December 2017.

Then I watched the episode again and realised that Irene was not standing on Ludgate Hill at all, but on the pedestrian street leading to the Millennium Bridge. The modern buildings on that street provide a series of reflections which provide a dramatic backdrop:

I have of course now been to the correct location, where it is surprisingly difficult to find a surface on which to balance a rather unsteady Funkopop (Irene has tiny feet with high heels) while including the right backdrop. Here at last is the corrected version for New Year’s Eve 2018:

Happy New Year from Toylocked!