Brick Lane By Night

Last Saturday night I joined up with the people from London Photo Walk to go on an all night solstice walk. We covered about 23km over 11hrs or so. It was a long but extremely rewarding night and I look forward to doing it again next year.

Given that this took place all through the night exposures were all very long, generally 15-30 seconds. It was also quite difficult to even know exactly what you were pointing your lens at as it was so dark in some of the back alleys and so composition wasn't always straightforward. This meant that over the 11hrs I only took about 100 photos; but there was a definite benefit to this. It was a bit like shooting with film, you were forced to put a lot more thought into what you were doing. If you pressed the shutter at the wrong time then you wasted half a minute of your life, which may not sound like much but it is quite the motivator when the wind is blowing at three in the morning.

As I said, we covered a lot of ground that night but the four photos in this post are all from the ever fascinating Brick Lane; one of my favourite streets in the world. Endlessly interesting and always full of life I have spent countless hours walking it's length, generally in the dead of night, but this was the first time I had ever taken my camera with me. I think it paid dividends. It isn't very difficult to make great art look good and obviously street art lends itself to street photography, something I normally struggle with.

Except for the fox, each of the pictures here have undergone quite a lot of post processing to bring out the best in them, or, rather, conceal the worst in them. These pictures were quite busy and messy to start with and mostly what I have done is to crop them down and remove colours to hopefully simplify them and make them easier on the eye. The shot below is a great example of where the original exposure wasn't up to snuff. There was different coloured crap all over the floor, the edges of other artworks to either side and and some unattractive lintels over the top. I cropped out most of all that, made it black and white to remove the distracting colours and then just allowed the reds and yellows to come through to keep it simple. Hopefully the result is a more satisfying picture that allows you to focus on the graffiti. It's a cliche but less is often more.

The View From St. Paul's

A few months ago my mother came to visit. She wanted to visit St. Paul's cathedral and climb to the summit, and so we went. On that occasion I just took a few snaps on my phone but I returned a few weeks later, awesome annual pass in hand, to try and get some decent clicks with my proper camera. Unfortunately the weather was against me. The photo above has been quite heavily processed to try and make the best of the sky; I've gotten quite lazy and you can see halos (no pun intended) around the buildings on the horizon. I also need to clean my lens and sensor. Below, I've deliberately gone for a silhouette type effect to mask the fact that otherwise it would be quite an underwhelming picture.

Still, I've learnt a lot about the location; I know what sort of shots I want to get, what time of day I need to be there to have the sun at the best angle and, like I said, I have an awesome annual pass and so I'm going to keep going back until the weather is in my favour. God willing.

Lest We Forget....

Pretty much everyone in London must be aware of the various commemorative public art installations that have been happening over the past few weeks to mark the centenary of the First World War beginning. With the passing of Harry Patch in 2009 this conflict did truly become history; he was the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of western Europe. It is now only through books, documentaries, films and other second hand sources that we can learn about what is sometimes called The Great War.

I'm not sure a war should ever be called great. Whilst there are certainly circumstances where it is worthwhile to take up arms to defend an ideal or way of life I don't think that we should necessarily glory in it. War should be a last resort, a terrible necessity carried out only to the extent necessary and only when no other option remains. Was the First World War one of these occasions? I honestly don't know. I've read conflicting views on this and am not qualified to make a judgement. I'm not sure that anyone is. I am sure that we must make sure nothing like that ever happens again and that is why installations like this are welcome. Each ceramic poppy in the pictures here, and I have by no means covered them all, represents a fallen soldier. I don't know how many there are, many hundreds of thousands. Too many.

The same as the first picture but original colour

The Thames Barrier

Ahhhh, this feels good. Today I did something I haven't done in a long time: I went out with my camera, in the sun, to take photos just for fun. I wasn't doing it because the stupid 365 Project was making its daily demand; nor because I was at some event where tradition demands that a few badly shot pictures of blurry revellers be taken for posterity; nor because I happened to be visiting somewhere that, theoretically, I should be taking photos of. No, today it was just me, the camera, good weather, London and science podcasts. Bliss.

So it was I decided to head down to the Thames Barrier. It's only a few miles from where I live but I had never gone down there before; I soon realised I had been remiss, there were ample opportunities for some interesting photography. 

The Thames Barrier, then. Why is it there? How long has it been there? How does it work? And why does it look so weird? Some of these questions are easier to answer than others. The reason it is in that specific location is quite straightforward; the Thames, if you look at it on a map, is wrigglier than a three year old with ants in their pants but in this little section, between Silvertown in Newham and New Charlton in the borough of Greenwich, the banks are quite straight and parallel to one another; this makes it much easier to build a massive, water tight, movable barrier - the second largest in the world. Also, the underlying chalk bedrock in the area happens to be a little harder than the chalk and clay on which most of London sits and so could support the structure. As an aside, London is steadily sinking into the ground much as Venice is now, but that's a problem for another century. The other interpretation of the question Why is it there? - as in Why do we need it at all? - is also simple enough, if not a little tragic.

In 1953 a spring tide coincided with a severe storm over the North Sea, this led to a surge in sea level of over 5 metres. The first area to be affected was Scotland where 19 fatalities were reported, but conditions only got worse as the surge travelled south into the progressively more shallow waters of the southern North Sea. Approximately 1000km2 of eastern England were flooded with the sea encroaching as much as 2 miles inland in Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Over 1600km of coastline was flooded along with severe floods in Silvertown and Canning Town in East London; just a mile down the road from me. The result was tens of thousands being made homeless and 307 deaths. At sea, many trawlers and other boats were lost producing another 224 deaths.

Sadly, by comparison, we had it easy. The Netherlands, where a fifth of the country is below mean sea level and half of it is at less than 1m above sea level, over 1800 people were drowned as a quarter of the country was lost to the sea. There were also long term effects as being flooded by sea water is not like being flooded by fresh water. Having that much salt dumped onto the land devastates farm land or, indeed, any land where you might want vegetation to thrive.

As a result of this natural disaster, the second worst in British recorded history, the Government began planning how to protect us from such 1 in 1000 year catastrophes. Sea defences around the country were built/bolstered and a plan for some kind of barrier to protect central London was commissioned.

The design was first drawn up in the 1950s by Charles Draper but construction didn't begin until 1974; it was opened by Her Majesty The Queen on my 1st birthday in 1984 and, in today's money, it cost nearly £2b. There are five large piers and two smaller ones creating four 60m navigable spans and two 30m navigable spans. The 60m spans were specifically that size so as to be the same as Tower Bridge, i.e. anything that could get through Tower Bridge had to be able to get through the barrier too. I think my photos struggle to convey the scale of this area adequately; the river is over half a kilometre wide here, and you could fit Tower Bridge onto it four times just in the central section. It's huge.

Used with permission

So how does the damn thing work? Hopefully the diagram to the right will help explain. Between each pier there is a hollow gate with a circular cross section; when the gates are closed this rests in a depression cut into the riverbed  allowing the free flow of water. To stop the fluvial flow these can be rotated such that nothing pass. To close the barrier isn't a simple task, though, it requires coordination with many other flood defences in the region and costs about £16000 per go.

The Barrier can protect London in two different ways depending on which direction the flooding is expected: from the North Sea or from the river itself. It's easy enough to imagine how it might protect London from the type of disaster experienced in 1953, you simply close the gate and, with any luck, nothing will get passed it and the areas down stream won't be too badly damaged either. But it can also help if there has been a lot of rain and the flooding is coming from upriver in the Thames basin. It does this by closing the gates during a low tide, this means that once the tide starts rising again it can't get back up river and this creates a basin of low level water that the flood water can run into allowing it to drain out of the city more quickly.

As it approaches it's 30th birthday the Thames Barrier continues to provide protection for Londoners; disconcertingly, though, this protection is having to be deployed more and more frequently. In it's first 6 years of use it was only closed 4 times, in the last decade it has averaged 7 times per year. Is this a possible measure of global warming? Are flood events occurring more often? In the fantastically complex science of climate change it isn't possible to draw a conclusion from one measure of anything, but it would seem to support that. The barrier was only designed to protect against a surge in sea level of 4.67 metres. If sea levels raise by a metre this century, as seems likely, then the capacity of the barrier to protect the capital would be greatly reduced. Add to that the slightly odd fact that Britain is tilting (the south and east are sinking and the north and west are rising at about 5cm/century) and the future looks ever more precarious. The original design was supposed to provide solid protection up until the year 2030 followed by a period of ever diminishing returns after that. The Environment Agency, however, who now runs the barrier, has said that it has no intention of replacing it before the year 2070. I do wonder if this is based on good scientific advice or on Governments that are not willing to spend money on insurance policies. Hopefully it won't take another disaster of the kind seen in 1953 to force their hand.

The view to the west, Docklands and the O2 can be seen in the distance

After three hours I had only covered about 200 yards of the riverbank but I had had a great time. The weather and light were fantastic and it was good to be there knowing that I could write it up at my leisure in the style that I used to before the 365 Project consumed my hobby. I knew I would have the time to look into the history of this impressive structure and do it some justice in words as well as in pictures. Basically, I have my blog back and I love it. I hope you enjoy it too.

Review of 2013....

Soooooooo, it has been rather a long time since my last post. This has been due to a number of reasons, partly laziness, partly lack of inspiration and frustration with the 365 Project, and partly because I have been in Romania for the last 3 weeks and internet connections there were few and far between. I will finish off the 365 Project, I have a bunch of photos on the back burner that I need to process and get written up and I will try to have that done by the end of the month. For now, I'm going to do one of those lazy Review of the Year posts with some of my favourite pictures from 2013. I won't include any from the period I haven't posted yet, you'll just have to be patient for those.

In 2014 I will be going back to my usual format of a post every fortnight or so. I think this gives me time to get some decent photos together and the words to go with them. I think the daily requirement of the 365 Project ultimately lowered the quality of what I do here, which was one of the reasons I became increasingly disenchanted with it. However, this does not foreshadow the year ahead, I am optimistic and enthusiastic about the blog for 2014. I have had 70,000 hits so far which is orders of magnitude more than I ever expected and so thank you to everyone who takes time out of their day to see what I've been up to. I'll try to raise the bar.

The last 12 months have been the most traumatic and difficult of my life, much of it self-inflicted, but there were certainly some good times too. Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me this far.

Gargoyle from inside the Natural History Museum, January.

View from Westminster Bridge, January.

Chain in Vienna, March.

St. Marco's piazza, Venice, March.

Venice, March. 

 

Parliament Square, London, May.

Pocketwatch, May.

Parliament Square, London, May.

 Dead flower, July.

 Olympic Park, September.

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Real Mandela has died and so people lay flowers at the feet of Zombie Mandela. Strange.

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Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park for Georgiana's birthday.

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The theme today is Simple Pleasures. This is one of the gateways into Russell Square where I come to sit and read my book every lunchtime. A simple pleasure.

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Tonight was the local fireworks display in Newham. The weather was pretty good so I took the camera and tried to get some decent pictures, this was one of my better attempts. This is a 4 second exposure and I rather liked the blue colours.

365 Project: Photo 300

Tonight I took my girlfriend, Georgiana, to a John Mayer concert at Wembley arena. We had pretty good seats, only about ten rows from the front, which afforded us a good view of the proceedings. I thought it was mostly quite tedious and bland. There was one exciting bit when he banged on about the Blues for five minutes, saying how great it was, I thought that here was something I could finally get behind; but then did a song that was in now way bluesy. Anyway, Georgiana thought it was awesome and I guess that's what counts. This picture is of the stage crew setting up between acts.

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Sunset in the Olympic village.

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A night out with workmates inevitably ends with me going for a walk along the river. Conveniently, the theme was Dark. This was taken on my phone, when drunk, from the Millennium bridge. The bright star above the moon is, in fact, Jupiter.

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This reflection caught my eye as I entered Stratford underground station today. The theme today, which I generally ignore, was Something Beginning With P; well, there are clearly some pigeons at the bottom of the picture there.

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As I was walking to work today I looked back the way I had come and saw the sunlight behind this tree. I've done a poor job of capturing it but I remember rather liking the look of it in the flesh.

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I went to see my joint favourite comedian, Micky Flanagan, tonight at the O2. He, as always, was excellent. The first time I saw him was maybe five years ago. I'd never heard of him and was with a group of friends at a local comedy club in Mile End, just a few hundred yards from where Mickey grew up. Our table was butted up against the stage and there was probably less than 200 people there, half of whom were just there to drink and yell abuse at the stage. The second time was about two years ago at the Hammersmith Apollo with a crowd of 3,000 or so; we definitely weren't too near the stage that time. Tonight, there must have been 20,000 people all straining to hear him.

I think he finally made it.

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A pleasant sunset stroll along Hampstead Heath, my first visit there in a very long time. Taken on my phone and cropped, hence the graininess.

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I took this on my phone at about 4am whilst walking down to Angel from Highbury after a good night out with friends. I fear I may have overdone the grunge effect but my judgement was somewhat rum-impaired.

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Yesterday I played around with the tilt shift effect on SnapSeed and today I've been using the new HDR effect they have recently added to it. I'm still undecided about HDR. I think that, in general, people over do it; although I have seen some fantastic examples of the genre I suspect the amount of effort that needs to be put in to do it 'properly' makes it not worth the hassle. Here, I've tried not to overcook it too much. If anything, though, there is a more distracting element to the picture that I can't get passed. To me it looks like the left side is the near side of the Eye and the right one is furthest away, which isn't the case. I find it incredibly distracting.

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I was waiting about on the steps in front of Stratford Station and remembered that I had been on the look out for somewhere with a bit of height to try out some tilt shift shots. Sadly, I don't actually have a tilt shift lens to properly achieve the effect but most apps these days seem to be able to apply a blur filter in such a way as to give the miniaturising effect for which tilt shift is famous. I did this using SnapSeed, my phone editing app of choice.

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Mirror Image.