A dog and his balloon

So far December hasn't disappointed at all. It's cold and dreary, and everybody is bundled up in big dark coats, gloves and scarves. So it's always nice to see something more cheery, colourful and a little different around this time of year.

And to think I was going to put my camera away because my fingers were getting cold... pfft. Moment almost missed.

...and buses might fly

In the future, maybe. We already have hybrids, flying ones shouldn't be too far away.

Pigeon or dove?

The internet says they are similar: "doves are white pigeons", "pigeons are a type of dove", "pigeons are crusty, grey and dirty but doves are clean, white and pretty", blah blah blah. All I know is that this white pigeon decided to sit on the bench I was sitting on and I had my camera with me.

I had a white carrier bag with me at the time, so maybe he (I shall refer to it as a "he" from now on) thought I had food. He was quite content with just perching near me.

I rustled the bag a little, and he got closer. Then I noticed the tip of his beak was overgrown and curling inward. He probably isn't that used to scrounging and fighting over crumbs. This along with his more friendly temperament lead me to believe that he might have been a hand-reared pigeon which was released during a ceremony (wedding?) and that instead of finding his way home, got lost and ended up in a park, joining a bunch of other "normal" pigeons. I offered him a piece of a nut and he pecked it out of my hand.

Naturally I wanted to see how close I could get the camera...

Almost into his face actually and he wasn't too scared of it, but my 35mm lens only focuses from about 30cm so this was about as close as I could get and still get a good picture.

Then he was joined by a friend (up top), but she (yes, the other one shall be referred to as a "she") had some black parts on her tail-feathers. Maybe she was also a hand-reared bird, and whoever released her coloured the dark bits white so she looked like an "all-white dove", and the white colouring washed out after living the street life for so long... Yeah, that's right, I created backstories for a couple of street birds.

A final "Hey, what's that ya got there?" pose.

Lego jacket

Strange fashion choices ahoy:

I won't knock it, I think her style is kind of interesting. But I don't know how comfortable it is to have a bag strap over the Lego blocks. Surely the weight of her bag is digging the blocks into her shoulder...?

In for the landing

130mm f/6 1/400 at ISO 400

The seagull just coming in to land had already ousted another gull from that post, and was ousted itself moments later by the seagull right behind him. I don't know why 3 birds were fighting over that one spot, it's not like there was a shortage of posts or anything.

Sometimes I like to take these freeze-frame type shots because most times I have my all-round walkabout lens on (Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di2) and I want to push it because it's not exactly the fastest lens around. It is convenient though. This lens isn't very bright towards the tele end and it was a cloudy day so I adjusted exposure and a few other levels in post to brighten it up a bit.

Pile of ducklings

A female Mallard sheltering her ducklings from the rain, like an umbrella... a duckbrella?

That's a lot of fuzzy ducklings. Duckpile!

(I believe these are the same ducklings as the ones in an earlier post)

Good for what ails you

Another antiques/curios shop display window. The bottle reminded me of those old pharmacies with the glass bottle full of a particular coloured liquid. I also liked the grungy colours and textures of the rusty ironwork, the patchy mirror and the painting in the background. This would make a good still life painting. I could probably give it a go in oil paint, once I finish my plague doctor mask.*


*It's almost done, it's just missing a headband of some kind. I just haven't gotten around to photographing it and uploading the pics.

Talk to the animals

I don't think the pigeon understands what you're saying unless you say it with bread.

One for the ladies

I hear he makes shoes, or something like that.

Taken back when the Design Museum were having an exhibition on him. Obviously the sign caught my eye, with its bright neon colours against the drab white of the building. It was a cloudy day when I took it so I accentuated the colours in post by upping the contrast and lowering exposure. It's a little more "artificial" or cartoony-looking than I normally prefer but it complements the colours well.

Byebye Kitty

So Kara, my cat in the Philippines died yesterday. Not really sure how or why, just that he was found in the house garden in the morning. He wasn't bloodied up like he'd been in a fight and it wasn't old age (he was only about 3 years old), so it might have been something he ate, or maybe something that bit him. I dunno. While I'm not bawling my eyes out or anything that dramatic, it's pretty sad because he was really friendly with people, unlike our other cats who just aren't used to human contact and will tend to run from you, unless it's feeding time and you have the food.

I took this shot of Kara with my Panny FZ45 last year, moments after a bout of really heavy rain. I saw him taking a quick lick of a puddle so I did the old zoom, point and shoot. I managed to capture a moment when he had his tongue out, which was pretty cool, especially since that camera isn't the fastest performer, particularly when shooting in raw.

He was a cool cat.

Trumpeter

Just off Leicester Square I heard what I thought at the time was a trumpeter busking. A little more playing and I started to think that the notes weren't coming from a trumpet at all. I navigated the crowds and followed the sound. That's when I saw the musician in question.

This man was actually "doot-doot-dooting" into the traffic cone, which amplified his song above the general cacophony of tourists and traffic. I don't remember the song he was "performing" but it was the only song in his repertoire and it was pretty catchy.

Update (July 2013): I heard this guy again, this time near Covent Garden. The song he was dooting was "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. It was the exact same song as the one in Leicester Square. His repertoire hasn't changed and his timing was still very much off. I suppose if it ain't broken...

Junk food

Whatever you can get your beak on.

Star cluster

I don't know the name of this plant. All I know about it is that the flowers are yellow and before they are pollinated and fall out they sit in these neat little star-shaped pods.

Getting this close to a subject makes me wish I had a macro lens handy. I suppose I could always do macro-type shots with my Panny, but that's an extra camera to carry around.

The artist

I liked that he was totally focussed on painting the water and greenery of the park. If I did this I would probably be looking over my shoulder every few minutes.

 

So zen. And very green.

Delicious cake

Squirrels like muffins too...

...but I like them more, so it gets to scrape the crumbs from the paper liner. No wonder he looks a little miffed. Nom nom nom.



I should finally be getting my Nikon back on Tuesday, so yay for me. I sure did miss it. My Panny has served me well in the meantime. This was taken with my FZ-45 and it does look nice and sharp (after post), but there's nothing like a good old manual zoom and optical viewfinder. Shame I won't get it back in time for the Notting Hill Carnival, but that's one less thing to lug around/get damaged/get stolen. Now lets see if the weather holds up.

What's inside the antiques shop?

It was really early in the morning, the sun was just starting to rise and I was walking home when I spotted this little set-up inside an antiques shop.

 

I like that the shop interior was still really dark, despite the brightly backlit stained glass window. I also like the contrast of the red halo with mostly green ambient light thrown out by the window. If I passed this shop in the daytime I probably wouldn't have seen this, so being up so early in the morning had at least 1 nice outcome... that and I was early enough to order from the McDonald's breakfast menu.

Trapped and abandoned

A toy boat stuck amongst some pond weeds.

I would have liked a seagull or duck to be in the foreground near the boat (it would have made a nice scale reference), but seeing as all the bready goodness was being thrown on the other side of the pond, they didn't bother coming my way.


Shot in jpg with my Lumix because Lumix raw is so slow to write and my Nikon is being serviced. I miss it already :/

Geese arrow

Not a exactly a V-formation/flying V, but still quite cool.

A swimming arrow.

Kimono

You don't see this everyday in London...

This lady stood out so well in the crowd, and her look was a refreshing change from all the backpacks, chinos and denim worn by regular tourists. I wish I was able to get more pictures of her kimono, but it was a pretty busy day when I took this, and it was right beside The Ritz hotel next to the bus stop and tube entrance to Green Park, so crowds of people came as standard.

...and his master

I saw this man looking intently at his dog, and for a second the dog looked at him then looked away just as quickly. It's like a role reversal, normally dogs are keen for their owner's attention while the owner gets on with his day but this dog seemed distracted, perhaps bored. Maybe he was expecting to chase a ball or a stick instead of sitting on the grass and be stared at. Or there's a squirrel somewhere in the trees.

Deep concentration, on both sides, on different things.

Kalabaw

I painted a picture of a carabao for my art blog a while back, and it seems to get a lot of visits, mostly from the Philippines. So I looked in my archives and found some photos of the real deal.

Unlike my painting this particular kalabaw is a fully working beast, hence all the rope and pully attached to its horns and body. This one also has a mottled head, kind of like reversed freckles, which were quite interesting as I only ever see ones that are totally brown or black.
 
It was "parked" just outside the family house in the Philippines after dragging a pile of bamboo into our front yard. I didn't know it was coming that day and when I saw it the yard I ran outside and took a couple of snaps with my crappy phone.

My FZ45 was upstairs in my room, so I ran back inside, up a couple of flights of stairs to my room, grabbed my camera, ran back down and when I got outside it was no longer in the yard :(

A detailed picture showing the spots, hairs, rope and rain-shined horns. My favourite of the set.

One way

It's nice when things come together in a totally unexpected way.

As I was walking back from a day in the park (sunny!) I saw a woman in a wedding dress on Portobello Road. An unusual situation I think, it had this whole "runaway bride" feeling about it. There were a lot of people walking in the opposite direction, getting in the way of my shot. I was also in line with a bunch of her friends walking behind her in the same direction so I just decided to shoot "from the hip" rather than bring the camera up to my eye. The lens was locked at 18mm and I just clicked when there was a break in foot traffic and moved on. Further down the road people were stopping in the street, taking out their cameraphones and just snapping away, which is probably less intimidating and in-your-face than a DSLR with a fat lens on it.

When I looked at the pic afterwards I think I got lucky. The people in frame were walking to the left, except the bride (and friend), nobody was in front of me, the "One way" arrow was in the centre of the frame pointing in the direction of the bride's path and the bride turned her head to look back at her friends. I don't know if there's any "theories" or "rules" with black & white photography but I did it with this because the buildings and bunting (all the colours in general, actually) were really distracting. As a black & white shot you're drawn more to the white of her dress.

100% unplanned and unframed but I think the different individual elements lined up nicely.

One crown, five rings, one eyeball

The olympic opening ceremony begins tonight, so here are a few pictures in keeping with the olympic theme. I'll throw in a few jubilee related pics too as that happened earlier this year but this blog didn't exist then, as well a general bunch of GB and flag-type pics for good measure.

 painted by the children of a nursery school

 Photographing the photographer

 Cute!

Note: if you hang the flag of the Philippines vertically, the blue portion should be on the left and the red on the right. Hanging it red-to-blue turns it into a war flag!

A pretty good summary of London's summer: The Olympics, the Shard, Tower Bridge. Missing: the rain! That happened moments after this was taken.

And finally, London 2012's mascot Wenlock, in Union Flag livery.

Beautiful Ugly

A little break from street-style and candid pics, I think. I've got loads of nature photos and I should upload some of those too.

(35mm f/6.3 1/160 ISO-100)

Dandelions, Beautiful and ugly.

Unlike the usual dandelion seed heads, this one was huge, a little bigger than a tennis ball. I was able to capture a lot of intricate detail in the full picture, despite the fairly slow shutter speed and hand-held camera (and, if I remember correctly there was a slight breeze). And yes, I knocked the seeds right off after taking this.

Up in the air

Moments like this are one reason I like having my camera with me.

(46mm f/5 1/4000 ISO-400)

I noticed a small group of people in the park, holding balloons, having their picture taken. I didn't really pay much attention, then they released the balloons. And they all looked up, some with their cameraphones because of "VIDEO EVERYTHING OTHERWISE IT NEVER HAPPENED!".

After the shot I realised some of the balloons were latex gloves. Medical students? Health & Safety officials? Simple balloon shortage?

"If, for example a guy was walking down the street with a parrot on his shoulder..."

(60mm f5.3 1/500 ISO-100)

I know, my last entry totally set me up for this post.

I was walking up some subway steps when I saw a guy walking in the opposite direction with a couple of blue things on his shoulders. I couldn't make out what they were until he was close enough, then out came the camera and snap!

The funniest thing was that when I held the camera up to my eye both of the macaws suddenly turned their heads and looked into the lens, as if they were posing for me. Even the one on the man's right shoulder looked forward so as not to be obscured by his head. The man on the other hand just looked straight ahead and carried on walking LIKE A BOSS, while everybody around him looked on in amazement. And so they should.

If I could change anything, a full body shot of him walking would have put him in a better context, but he was already close to me and walking quite fast so I ended up half-bodying him (plus my camera was in my bag, argh!). I also would have liked some bystander reactions, but nobody was in frame when I took the photo (just my luck, really).

Keep on rockin', Parrot Man!