Regent's Canal

Reflection of a gas holder in the frozen surface of the canal

Another week brings me to another one of London's canals. Last Saturday saw me up and out in the biting cold to join in on my first ever London Photo Walk. What they seem to do is meet up every six weeks or so and wander along a predetermined picturesque route somewhere in the capital. There's no fee or dues to be paid, it's just a group of like minded people out and about with their cameras - it was great.

The route started at London Fields, went down through Broadway market and then out along Regent's canal before returning back to London Fields. At first I felt pretty self-conscious, I get nervous about street photography at the best of times nevermind when there's scores of strangers around and it's your first time at a new event. This wasn't helped by the fact that I was feeling a bit tender from the night before. The jitters quickly disappeared though as being in such a large group was actually a big help, everywhere I looked there was someone with a camera in front of their face snapping away.

Not only did this large group help give me a bit of a safety-in-numbers style boost in confidence but they also gave me lots of good ideas. If I saw someone near me take a shot then I wanted to know what it was of, sneaking a peak over their shoulder to see what they had captured. This gave me a fresh perspective on scenes that I might otherwise have passed over unnoticed.

The Regent's Canal is linked to the Lea Navigation canal that I blogged about a few weeks ago near the Olympic Park via the Hertford Union Canal. The canal itself was probably a little less pleasant than the Lea, perhaps not benefiting from an Olympic inspired clean up. One similarity between the two though was an array of excellent graffiti; I know many consider this nothing more than vandalism but, in the right setting, it's rapidly becoming one of my favourite art forms. I suspect that, as I and numerous others on the walk were photographing the big bird motif, we may well have caught the artist in the act. It looked a lot brighter than everything else in the area and the man standing furtively next to it with a carrier bag of what could well have been spray cans was behaving very strangely. He clearly didn't look comfortable having people paying close attention to what he was doing, but at the same time he didn't leave, he must have had more work to do.

The only draw back to this excellent event was the biting cold. Those that know me will know that I love the cold, it's very much my sort of weather; this was a different matter however. To be able to use my camera properly I can't be wearing gloves, they're too clunky and I can't feel my way around the camera. No gloves and two hours at sub zero temperatures left my hands a little worse for wear. For the last half hour I couldn't feel the shutter button and often actually had to watch what my fingers were doing to know what I was up to. When I text my wife once it was over it took me nearly five minutes to write a simple message because I couldn't really move my fingers. Making a fist as quickly as I could took me nearly five seconds and my little finger wouldn't move at all. My hands were in not inconsiderable amounts of pain into the next day and holding anything with them was particularly painful.

I now own a lovely pair of fingerless gloves.