Sunset and silhouette

Also, birds!

Light Shaft

Pillars, Posts, Person

Return of black & white.

Reflected Refractions

Abstract.

A combination of reflective glass windows reflecting glass panels that are refracting light. I like how these huge panes of glass sit neatly and square on the sides of buildings, but they never seem to be completely flat, distorting lines into curves and other bendy shapes like a hall of mirrors.

Ribs

Under the southside of Blackfriars Bridge.

Repeating lines, contrasting light and darkness, would convert nicely into black & white... of course my attention was drawn to this view :)

Under The Shard

Well, almost under The Shard.

I wanted to photograph The Shard from a different angle so I decided to look up for an abstract view, rather than across the river or down the street to take the whole building in (which I've done many-a-time :D ). It was a cloudy day which gave the sky a fairly even tone and as I looked up a plane flew into frame which helped to put the negative space into context (at least I think it does. I could just be sounding arty for the sake of sounding arty. Ha!)

2 Sides to Every Story

I saw this scrawled on a pavement somewhere in central London (I don't really remember where exactly).

As well as the obvious, I also liked the earthy colours and ambient lighting of the whole scene.

I remember thinking it looked kind of intriguing, but very out of place. It wasn't near any buildings of significance (government, etc) where the "message" might have had some impact, it was just under a tunnel of scaffolding. You usually end up finding interesting scenes in weird places.

Notting Hill Carnival 2013

What I wanted to do: walk the entire Notting Hill carnival route (from the top of Great Western Road all the way round to Ladbroke Grove).
What I ended up doing: walking against the route and deviating from it at the bottom of Great Western Road (the crowds got a bit too big to pass). Mission almost accomplished.

I've never walked the full carnival route from start to finish (or finish to start, whichever way you head). It takes a lot of patience and careful timing. Leave too early and there's nothing on the street, too late and you'll just see the tops of other people's heads. I live really near to the "holding area" of the route where the floats and dancers line up before starting the procession at 12 noon, so I could either walk with the flow and look at people, or walk in the opposite direction and re-join the procession somewhere in the middle. I started with the former, got to the top of Great Western Road then walked back, as going against the route would provide better photo opportunities. Crowds are good for street photography and candids but if you're only out for that when there's a carnival going on around you're a bit odd.

Some of the day's better shots:

 Air drumming

 Where's Wally?

This guy was fun, he was really feeling the music.

Train tickets costume.

 "On the Beat". For the bobbies.

I didn't ignore all street photo opportunities. This kid standing on a window sill with black bar shades was too good to pass up.

Eternity Drum. One of my favourite pictures of the day. You can really feel the energy and fun in their performance.

Then I couldn't walk the rest of the route (Great Western Road was completely rammed out, and basically one-way) so I had to take a detour through Portobello Road...

...snapping one more street shot along the way for good measure.


Also goes without saying that Monday is the day to go. Sunday is a little more chilled (kids day and all) but you don't really get the full-on experience of big costumes and crowds of people. And travelling light/safe is good. I carried my little Lowepro Toploader rather than my big Crumpler Cupcake, my camera was strapped into my Pacsafe strap and I had just the bare essentials in my front pockets.

Photo Set: Animals (B&W)

In alphabetical order, I suppose:

 Gullwings. One up, one down.

 Power-pigeons. Grime and grime.

Sausages in the park.

 Trellick pigeon. I tried to focus on the bird but AF chose the building instead. Oh well.

Webdrops. 35mm goodness after the rain.

Self shot

Not a huge fan of the "selfie".

This is my version, all lines and shadows; my silhouette, some crazy paving, and of course pigeons. But that's London for you, pigeons everywhere.

We used to called them "MySpace angles", particularly the ones where you'd place the camera up high and shoot downwards. Of course nowadays Facebook has all but slaughtered MySpace to be the self-indulgent stage of the moment, and front-facing cameras on phones have increased self-shot portraits to no end. The selfie lives.



My favourite "selfie" of the moment. Thanks, internet!

It's the ridiculous phone and duckface that does it for me.

(via)

Tunnel vision

I took this because of the converging lines and vanishing point. The walls and ceiling were also painted gloss blue which contrasted nicely with the reflected yellowy-white light from the striplights and patches of daylight on the walls. It did, however lend itself much more to black and white, especially where the shadow is interrupted by those box windows. I like how the repeating lines are much more prominent, and the ladder-like shadow on the ground is bolder. It's no longer about contrasting colours and now about the composition of strong lines and repeating elements.

Backside Tailslide

Taken at the wonderfully grimey Southbank Centre.

(30mm 1/1000, f4.2 ISO 400)

I don't know if backside tailslide is the correct name for this trick (the closest I've ever been to riding a skateboard was playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 on my computer) but this skater was performing something a lot like the videos I checked out online for comparison.

It was a sunny day and I was set at ISO 100, but for this shot I bumped it up because I was shooting into shadows and wanted a fast shutter speed. I chucked it into shutter priority and fired off a couple of quick shots.

He didn't land the trick after this particular attempt, but his stance mid-slide looked pretty neat.

Ignore the horse

I remember passing by this window a few times. One day I decided to cross the road and wait for just a few minutes.

The two people lined themselves up nicely, and I like that they both ignored the big wooden horse as well as each other: the woman engrossed in her iPhone/MP3 player, the man in his own thoughts, probably.

I would have preferred a more centred, less-cropped shot, but I had to shoot off-centre as my own reflection in the window was really obvious even though I was on the other side of the road. I suppose a polariser would have been good to have (at least to lessen the reflections in general) but I only have a 52mm polariser and this lens has a 62mm filter, and fiddling with polarisers isn't very efficient when shooting on-the-move. I'm still in the picture (left door reflection, under the awning) but I'm standing in a shadow and my outline is barely visible in this 900px resize.


Last night I had a dream in black and white, which wasn't entirely surreal as it was street photography related. I remember standing around a lot of other photographers in an urban setting, and we were all moving around, trying to line each other up with the backgrounds to shoot some interesting compositions. Nobody really stood still for too long though, we were all looking for that perfect shot. I did manage to get a couple of guys framed up between two vertical structures, and I remember being quite pleased at framing and shooting these fast-moving subjects.

That was pretty odd.

Diyolin kids

Yeah, I had to Google the spelling of diyolin. I kept thinking it began with a J, even though I know J isn't in the Filipino alphabet.

I was in a car when saw these kids playing with marbles on the roadside in the Philippines. This was one of those moments where I thought that this little slice of street life might look interesting (before street photography was something I took a greater interest in). Luckily there were no cars passing in the lane next to me and we were stuck in some slow-moving traffic, but I was shooting with my 35mm lens through glass and had to frame the shot with a crop in mind as we were a bit too far away to fill the frame.

What struck me was just how close to the road they were. These kids couldn't have been older than 8 or 9 years old and they decided to set their marble game up just inches from the road edge. But it's not like they were short on floor space. Look at how much pavement is behind them! I remember one of my primary school teachers telling us the tale of that kid who was playing with his football in the street instead of just holding it like a good boy, and he kicked it a little harder than usual and it landed in the middle of the road, and he ran between parked cars into the road to get his ball, not realising that he was running into the path on an oncoming car, and the driver had no time to react. Yeah, I thought about that tale when I took this, just replace that football with an over-enthusiastically flicked marble.

But then again these are hardened street children, not soft, pampered wuss-bags.

Sunset in the city II

Red sky at night...

Another city sunset with no real horizon, but that neon sky... shepherd's delight.

Ominous

My initial thought when I first saw this scene was "Oh wow, what an amazing cloud! It looks impressive contrasted against the dark, angular building tops" which was immediately followed by "Oh crap, it's gonna rain and I don't have an umbrella. Better take my photos and get home, quick!"

What caught my eye was the different shades that the cloud had, from light at the top (illuminated by the sun behind me) to dark at the bottom (rain!). I took a few shots with my FZ45 and got home before the rain came down. I transferred them to my computer and kind of forgot about them until now, when I decided to "organise" my photos folder few days ago. It's good to have fresh eyes on a picture you initially didn't pay much attention to, in the same vein that some photos you thought were keepers turn out to be throwaway.

I kept the tops of the buildings in to frame the subject as well as to give the shot a sense of location. The main diagonals throughout are nice too. I also like that the outline of the buildings mirrors the sky above, but that is a happy coincidence rather than an intentional outcome.

The same cloud taken a little further down the road with the domed building, about a minute later. The cloud has flattened dramatically and the building is now the prominent feature. I used to like this picture more than the previous one simply because it looks like a floating building/sky castle, but now I think the previous picture is just as strong in terms of composition and lines, if not stronger.

Grimy

Urban decay always makes for an interesting subject.

Nothing like old spray can art on a rusty bridge. Filthy perfection!

I Like You.

A street shot taken some time last year. The weather's been mostly crappy recently so I decided to look in my pics 'archive'.

I had my 35mm lens on at the time and saw this bit of graffiti in an alley somewhere in Soho. There weren't many people walking through the alley but I put the camera to my eye and half-pressed and waited. Fortunately the man that ended up walking into frame was too busy walking fast to look into the lens and didn't really notice me taking the photo.

More street photos to come, whenever...

Flurry

YAY SNOW!

I wanted a photo of something a bit more interesting than an all-white park or road (I have plenty of those).

As the sun went down and I decided to go home the snow began to fall heavily after a brief pause. The snow falling around the street lamps reminded me of bugs attracted to bright lights. I really wanted a total freeze-frame, but alas I had to sacrifice shutter speed. There's also a bit of lens flare, but seeing as I was shooting directly at a lightbulb it gets a pass.

Sunset in the city

Happy New Year, etc.

I totally forgot about the New Year parade in central London, so when I walked into the area of the event I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately - and because I forgot about the parade - I caught the tail-end of it and only managed to take a few photos of the event (which I'll probably post another time).

Walking back through Piccadilly as the sun was going down was pretty dramatic. I snapped this sunset with the warm, yellow light reflecting off the buildings. Sunsets in the city rarely involve a real horizon.

The roads in the immediate area were closed, hence the lack of general traffic. It kind of gives this image a 28 Days Later, post-apocalyptic feel (always good), and the people frozen in time look a little like zombies aimlessly wandering around, looking for brains... brains.

Now I feel like watching a zombie film. Any suggestions?