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.