Category Archives: London

Cloudy London

31 March 2013

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Far back in the mists of ancient time, a whole week before the start of the 2012 London Olympics, my wife and I took a trip into London to see an all-night Dark Knight trilogy screening. We had a bit of time to kill before the midnight screening, so I ended up taking quite a few photographs. I’ve already posted most of them, in London at Night (Part IV) and In the Skatepark at Midnight. Earlier in the day, however, we wandered across Waterloo Bridge. It was a cloudy day, so I decided to experiment with HDR images to bring out the clouds and the sky.

f/3.5, ISO 500, 18mm (HDR)

f/3.5, ISO 500, 18mm (HDR)

Before we got there, however, we came across a weird steampunk show on the South Bank outside the National Theatre. It made for some interesting shots.

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Winter Wonderland

22 March 2013

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I am fully aware that it is (as near as makes no difference) spring in many parts of the world, but I’ve been outside recently enough to know that it still feels like winter out there, so I don’t feel all that guilty in posting, on the cusp of spring, this mostly untopical and alarmingly tardy post about a winter market.

1/1600sec, f/5, ISO 100, 48mm

1/1600sec, f/5, ISO 100, 48mm

As far as I’m aware, because I haven’t bothered to research this post, Winter Wonderland is a German-cum-Christmas market that happens every year in Hyde Park in London. There are craft stalls, food stalls, and rides, an ice rink and a Santa’s grotto.

I didn’t photograph a huge amount whilst we were there; it was absolutely freezing and I was with a small chunk of my extended family – including my five-year-old semi-cousin (I don’t understand all that eighth-cousin thrice-removed crap) – so I didn’t stop all that often to shoot. Still, I managed to get a few decent images.

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London at Night: Somerset House

10 February 2013

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I’m continuing to work through my backlog of images in the order that most appeals to me. Today we’re heading back to mid November and a trip to Somerset House with Catherine. Being November, the ice rink that set up there each winter was in full swing. Also, with it being November, it got dark quickly.

1/15sec, f/3.5, ISO 1000, 19mm

1/15sec, f/3.5, ISO 1000, 19mm

Much like a lot of other trips in the London at Night series, the building was bathed in strong, odd-coloured light. This is done to many of the buildings in London and, I’m sure, is mainly done to aggravate photographers using auto white balance. On this occasion, Somerset House was lit by an orangey-pinkey tint. Normally I’d consider dropping the colour temperature of the image to soften the warmth of the photo, but in this case I couldn’t do that either, because of the ice rink being so strongly lit with a brilliant blue light.

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To Tower Bridge

31 January 2013

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Apologies to everyone for the false start on this post earlier, I accidentally hit ‘Publish’ instead of ‘Save Draft’ and it was released to the world long before it was ready (and that time, it was called That London, very much a working title). Don’t worry, this is now the finished article. Unless I accidentally hit ‘Publish’ again, in which case it isn’t.

With All’s Well That Ends Well finally cleared from my to-do list, I can once again turn my attention back to the backlog of images I’ve been working through since summer. It’s not quite as bad as I thought it was, but I did just realise that there’s slightly more images still to be edited than I thought. Never matter, it gives me plenty to do – the main issue I have is knowing where to start.

This batch of photographs dates back to a sunny August afternoon, when I decided to combine my lunch break and the walk to a different campus for a meeting and take some photos on the way. This was a while ago now, so forgive me if my memory of this one is a little hazy.

The main thing I was interested in capturing was a shot of Tower Bridge whilst it still had the Olympic Rings on it, before they were taken down and substituted for the Paralympic Logo. That was at my destination, however, and I had plenty to see before I got that far.

f/9, ISO 200, 70mm (HDR)

f/9, ISO 200, 70mm (HDR)

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London at Night: Covent Garden

3 December 2012

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1/5sec, f/18, ISO 1600, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm

1/5sec, f/18, ISO 1600, exposure bias -0.33, 18mm

Whilst waiting for my wife to finish work to go out for a meal last week, I went for a walk around Covent Garden with my camera. That’s how I kill time these days – find somewhere and point a camera at it.

Covent Garden is not far from Trafalgar Square, an area of shops, market stalls and eateries. There is an air of Borough Market about it, but not quite on the same scale. It isn’t just a market, however; there’s numerous street performers, pubs and bars. In other words, one of those quintessential London spots.

There is a central covered area containing independent stalls as well as more mainstream shop units, called the Apple Market. When I went there it was all decorated for Xmas.

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November No More

1 December 2012

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The penultimate month of 2012 has now been and gone, and the inexorable march of time I keep mentioning because I’m too lazy to come up with a more creative way of describing it has brought us round to December and the last 31 days of the year. I always seem to wax pretty lyrical at the start of these monthly reports. It’s all just shameless filler and hopefully I’ll soon grow out of it.

November ended a bit unusually. I got taken out a bit by some bug that had some mild flu-like symptoms and has left me off of work with a bit of a debilitating cough for the last few days. I’m not looking for sympathy here, nor am I making excuses; I’m attempting to convey the weirdness of the end of the month, especially for someone like me who can be a real stickler for routine. Anyway, being off of work is usually a reason to get stuff written so I have no excuses.

Routine was almost accidentally the theme of the month. I slipped, subconsciously at first, into a regular posting pattern. I tried to make it last, but I didn’t quite make it; that is the one effect of the sickness (that is too much to be a cold but not enough to be the flu) this month. But I will come to that shortly. Let us, as ever, go back and start at the beginning.

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Instagram #14

30 November 2012

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When I sat down to compile this, the fourteenth sup at my well of Instagram images, I was surprised to see that not only was my last Instagram post over two months ago, but the images it contained were themselves two months old at the time. As I crawled back to pick up where I left off, my usual technique for compiling an Instagram set, I backtracked past numerous images, going past all of the good stuff that is yet to come. That is in no way to demean the images in this set. Quite the opposite, in fact: when I compile these sets I go through them chronologically, picking out the ones worthy of showing and releasing them in batches of nine. I’m just letting you know, Instagram #15 will be ready to go as soon as I need some shameless post-filling.

This is another great set that I’m proud of. There’s a final shot from during the Olympics, as a woman in London takes a snapshot of the Olympic Rings floating on the Thames. There’s a few shots from around London, there’s an image of me looking like a knob (as usual) and a shot of my wife relaxing on a lazy Sunday afternoon with her iPad.

Shameless plug: if you like this lot, then you can follow me on Instagram by clicking on my shiny new Instagram badge in the “Me, Elsewhere” section of the right sidebar, or clicking this link (which ultimately takes you to the same place), or visit my Tumblr, which contains a nice medley of Creative Splurges, the Daily Photo and my Instagram images all pooled into one page of nothing but images for ease of viewing. I actually really love that Tumblr, and I don’t think it gets the attention it deserves.

In the Skatepark at Midnight

28 November 2012

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I haven’t quite managed to keep up with posting every Monday. In my defence, I’ve been afflicted by something that had many of the hallmarks of either a mild flu or a bad cold and didn’t manage to complete anything over the weekend, and I’m currently sitting here as I type this with my body apparently trying to cough up my own lungs. Hey ho, nothing like a day off of work to give me a chance to complete some writing and hack up my internal organs in peace.

Whilst wandering around London one night waiting for a movie to begin, my wife and I happened across a small area designated for skating that exists on the South Bank. It’s been there for quite a while, but I’ve never stopped there to photograph; I’ve passed it a few times when armed with my camera, but there’s often a significant imbalance between spectators and skaters leaving me feeling too self conscious to photograph them.

1/15sec, f/4, ISO 2500, exposure bias -0.67, 24mm

Funnily enough, the skatepark seems brighter at night than during the day; at night, the place is well lit, but these lights are off when the sun is up. As reasonably well lit at this is, it made for an interesting challenge, as there was precious little light for shooting action.

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Along the Thames

19 November 2012

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Whilst chasing the Olympic Torch back in July, I used the Thames path as a way of bypassing the closed and inevitably busy roads as the torch made its way around London. I made the three-mile trip on my bike from Richmond to Kew Bridge along the river in the hope of heading the torch off at the pass and having another go at shooting it. Not realising how much time I actually had to make the trip I didn’t stop for anything, but couldn’t help noticing shots to capture.

On the way back, I took a little more time, and stopped to photograph some of the great scenery along the banks of the Thames.

f/8, ISO 320, 18mm (HDR)

Actually, that isn’t entirely true. My first couple of shots were taken on my way to Kew. I caught sight of an interesting undergrowth in the floodplains of the Thames and just had to capture it.

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October, Over

3 November 2012

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The inexorable march of time continues, and we have now made it most of the way through the year. It’s hard to believe that we are now in the twilight of 2012, with the end in sight. Don’t worry, I still have some low-grade alliterative titles for the rest of the year’s monthly reviews all ready. You can probably guess what they are, because frankly they’re terrible. I’m sure I’ll revise the titling scheme in the new year.

So, October. It’s been a relatively quiet month, in terms of the number of posts – tied with May for the fewest in a month for 2012 – but I seem to have gotten the balance right of quality over quantity. Of the five posts in the month (excluding September’s review, posted on the first day of October), the least popular post had 12 likes, and the least discussed post had 7 comments. It wasn’t that long ago I’d have killed for that sort of reaction. More importantly, I’ve been very pleased with the quality of the posts, which matters too. I can’t say I was confident that the month’s posts would be well received – I’ve written before on my astonishing inability to foretell the reaction to anything I publish, but I was proud of the posts, and is a really good feeling.

The only downside is that none of the images posted in October were taken in October. Some were taken in September, which is pretty close, but some date back to August, which, as that was back when it was warm and still technically what was passing for summer this year, it feels like an age ago. I’m still working through that backlog I seem to keep mentioning, and am using the opportunity to pick and choose what posts to work on next to present them in a more interesting order. It has meant a few more ‘Quickies‘ than usual, but that isn’t really a bad thing, is it?

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