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.

Quintessentially English

Atop the Captsone

A few weeks ago I had the absolute pleasure of giving a friend away. No, not at some sort of charity car boot sale; it was at her wedding. She had had the good judgement to get married at Tunnels Beaches in Ilfracombe, Devon. Not only is it a fantastic venue in which to get married with views out to the Irish Sea and your very own private beach to explore, but the town of Ilfracombe itself is a very picturesque one. Having spent 6 hours on a coach getting there after work I was keen to get out and about the next morning. As luck would have it my hotel was just opposite the Capstone, as locals call it, or as you and I might, the big cliff thing.

Freshly fueled with eggs and bacon I charged up to the top as fast as my little legs could carry me where, at the summit, I was rewarded by fantastic views in all directions. To east and west were views of the coast and cliffs, and to the south all of Ilfracombe was laid out before me. The terrain is hilly and the bulk of the older part of town nestles in a valley running parallel with the coastline; some newer developments have followed the valley as it kinks south. Very little land is wasted, the hills are steep and so many streets are terraced, clinging to the sides of the slopes as the terrain permits. The result is lots of little blind corners, narrow alleys and sudden inclines that frequently put me in mind of the time I spent in south Wales as a child; which shouldn't be so surprising given the two are only separated by 30km or so of water. Indeed, the hotel played Welsh radio in the dining room, which rather threw me as I hadn't undergone the normal mental preparation I would customarily go through before returning there. Also at the peak was the statue in my photo at the top of this post, although I'm afraid I must confess that I have no memory of why it is there or what it represents. I can say that it does a good job of conveying the energy and movement that is so evident atop the cliffs there.

The Landmark Theatre, at bottom left, tends to polarise locals; they either love it or hate it.

My time in Ilfracombe was short but very pleasant. I have been to that part of Devon before and will happily return again in the fullness of time. I don't get to the coast as half as much as I would like which is a shame because the UK is blessed with hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline. I must make sure I don't neglect it so in the future.

365 Project: Photo 262

The theme was Morning Sun. Errrrmm, this is actually the evening sun but, hey, look at those colours!

365 Project: Photo 254

Off topic again today but I couldn't resist this sky above Westminster, a beautiful mish mash of clouds and contrails.

365 Project: Photo 231

This sunset was taken in the Barnett area of north London. The lamp posts annoy me but I can't be bothered to clone them out so there they stay. We have had a long, warm, dry summer here in the UK and that has certainly helped produce some wonderful sunsets. Here we have a nice combination of small cumulus clouds with a higher cirrus layer above. Beautiful.

365 Project: Photo 215

Today I had to go the dreaded foot clinic for a check up on my gammy plantar. I left with a new set of orthoses in my shoes that the podiatrist said I would likely find 'challenging'. She wasn't kidding. After five minutes of walking back into town I was limping along so slowly that I was overtaken by an asthmatic ant carrying heavy shopping. So it was that I decided to repose in the churchyard of St. John's. As I lay there I thought I spotted a chance to make a nice silhouette out of the stonework against the clouds, Silhouette being the theme of the day. On my phone this silhouette looked much better, the church was properly black, now that I see it on the laptop there is more detail visible than I'd like. In any case, here it is.

365 Project: Photo 184

I went for a walk along the South Bank tonight, and very pleasant it was too. The theme was Contrast. It doesn't get much more contrasty than a silhouette.

365 Project: Photo 002

Last night, having just committed to this project, I was starting to wonder what on Earth I'm going to find to take a photo of every day but today has not been difficult. When I woke up this morning there was a very strange orange glow smoothly gliding past our otherwise industrial strength, lead-lined curtains. I pointed it out to my wife and asked, only half jokingly, if the world was on fire. I peeled back the curtain to reveal one of the best sunsets I have seen in years; I was in an African desert the last time I saw a sky as orange as that.

In a perfect world I'd be back in that desert, I'd have been up before first light, I'd be taking my time and using graduated neutral density filters on my best camera to balance out the exposure of the sky and the land as I composed a shot of a sand dune with, maybe, the silhouette of an oryx side on to the camera; and it would have been one of the best photos I had ever taken. But that is not my life. Instead, I grabbed my phone and hastily took a few vaguely out of focus pictures of my neighbours cement covered wall and a lamp post, complete with weeds slowly cracking the building apart. Within five minutes the display had ended and a wet, grey, very typically British winter's day had set in.  The photo is unedited in any way. Only just now have I spotted that there was a pigeon sitting on top of the lamp post and I'm pleased that she's there because it adds a little more character to the shot.

The view from my bedroom window. At least I managed to keep our satellite dish out of frame.

2012 Round Up

As the end of the year draws near we approach that time when journalists the world over start getting all retrospective and nostalgic about the passing of another 12 months. Whilst it seems like this is a reasonable enough tac to take the reality is that it is a quick, easy and lazy way to generate another week of output on the cheap; and who am I to argue with such a proud tradition? So here, having gone to absolutely no effort whatsoever, are a collection of some of the better photos from the blog over 2012. Some of them are taken from the most popular posts of the year and some of them are just ones I like. Normal service will resume in the New Year. Enjoy!

This is one from a post on how to incorporate textures into images, the photo itself is from Porto.

This shot of Tower Bridge could be improved by returning early morning when the sun would be off to the left and less harsh.

This close up of a leopard is from a post on abstracted animals.

Although the town itself is forgettable Tulum is one of the most impressive archaeological sites I've been to.

Chichen Itza, the second most visited place in all of Mexico.

This shot of a hummingbird is a bit out of focus but was the best I managed to get and the culmination of a lot of effort.

I just love the colour palette in this picture.

Sunset on the South Bank: heaven.

From the same post as above, once the sun had gone down we went to the top of One New Change for this amazing view of an icon of London.

This panorama of Mount Esja is quite beautiful when viewed blown up, even if I do say so myself.

This is one of Sue's favourites from our trip to Vietnam.

South Bank Sunset

Thames-side bunting, perhaps left over from the Jubilee celebrations

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that last Sunday I went on a London Photo Walk along the South Bank. This is basically a group of people that meet up and then stroll along a pre-agreed route taking pictures as we go. This is only the second walk that I've been free to go on, the first one being on Broadway Market back in January which I wrote about here and here. It's a really informal meet and the idea behind it is simply to meet up with a group of friendly, like minded people. I normally take my best photos when I'm on my own, when I have the time to focus on what I'm doing, take my time and not feel guilty about slowing down or ignoring whoever I'm out with, normally my wife. It's a little bit different with this group though as we all have the same ultimate goal: to share ideas and put them into practice.

This busker made a good silhouette but was singing Coldplay so I had to be quick

When the route for this particular walk was decided I had mixed feelings; I love the South Bank, I go down there at least every fortnight if not more often, the walk along the Thames from Westminster to Tower Bridge is one of my favourite past times; but, on the other hand, there is probably no where on Earth that I have more thoroughly photographed so would there be anything there to catch my interest?

The simple answer is: yes, of course. If I went there every week for the rest of my life there would still be new and interesting pictures to be taken, and if one day I went there and couldn't see anything exciting then it would be my lack of imagination that was at fault.

So what was there to see? Well, we stated at the London Eye and walked passed the South Bank Centre and on towards the Tate Modern; there, we crossed over the Millennium Bridge, scooted around the east side of St. Paul's and headed for the roof of One New Change, a new shopping centre. On the roof they have a bar and restaurant and also a terrace that offers views south and west back towards our start point at Jubilee Gardens and County Hall. The main feature of this fantastic view, though, was the up close, up high vista of the dome of St. Paul's cathedral. I highly recommend a quick trip to this terrace if you are in the area, it really is a great view and is separate from the bar so you don't need to pay to be up there.

Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral

As you can see, it had gotten dark by the time I took this one but that was always the plan; the theme of the walk was sunset, which is why many of my photos make use of silhouettes. The photo I am most proud of however is the one below. Many times as I have walked beside the Thames I have tried to take a photo that does justice to the lamp posts that line the route. They are incredibly ornate and deserve a suitably dramatic portrait. The problem is that if you do close ups you just notice that they're really quite dirty and if you do a wider angle shot then they just get lost in the busyness of the cityscape. Here, though, I think I finally nailed it.  The shot is close enough to reveal some of the detailing of the lamp posts and yet wide enough to give them context. The silhouette effect helps remove detail from the mid and foreground so that they remain the central focus and I also like the perspective as they slowly recede deeper into the picture.

My favourite picture of the day

Any Londoners reading this that want to find out more about the group can do so here and I'll end by saying thank you to the organisers for another successful walk.