Bian lian

Also known as the Chinese art of face changing.

I took this at the beginning of the year during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square. I got there a bit late and started off at the back of the audience that gathered for the main stage. The weather was really wet and a lot of people who weren't prepared for the downpour were driven away, so I slowly made my way towards the front of the audience. I eventually ended up at the front of the stage, umbrella in one hand and camera in the other.

This performer was brilliant. It was extremely difficult to see how he managed to change masks so quickly. I've seen a couple of pics online where other performers have been sloppy and are "caught" at the moment where their mask changes, but the transition from one mask to the next on this act were just too smooth and very well hidden, and he was very fast.

I was mostly on shutter priority and burst mode by the evening, taking 3 or 4 shots per press. I bumped up exposure compension by about 1 stop so that I could keep my ISO fairly low, reason being that I only have my Tamron travel lens with a good enough reach and it's not brilliant in low light (I'd also just learned about exposure compensation so this was a bit of a test :D ). I shot in RAW which filled up my cards quickly but helped with retaining details in post-production. My camera also got rained on pretty hard despite me having an umbrella, but it survived the night thanks to my trusty microfibre cloth (pretty lucky for a camera/lens setup that has zero weather sealing).

Some of the other quick change masks he used. I didn't snap them all as I actually wanted to watch him perform:

The man behind the masks.

 

If you know his name, please let me know :)

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!)

Left Out

The way the girl is gazing off into the distance makes it look like she wasn't included in the trio's game, but she wasn't really. She was just looking towards her mother who was out of frame.

The camera sometimes lies.

Boats and More Boats

Also pedalos.

It was the right-left-right-left, fading into the distance that I liked.

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.

Black, White & Blue

(Regents Park)

The bending reflections of those vertical bars in the water was the first thing that caught my attention. I wanted more than just an abstract image so I waited a few moments for some of the local wildfowl to appear in frame. Fortunately for me the birds that decided to do so were a black and a white one, paddling (floating? wading?) in opposite directions.