After our abridged visit to Carnival on Day 1, we walked down from Queens Park to Notting Hill on Monday psyched up for a full session at Day 2. The mood was slightly subdued by grey skies and unseasonably low temperatures (think 17C) and, I suspect, quite a few hangovers from Day 1. But you can’t stay subdued for long once you get sucked into a mas parade full of exhuberant, brightly attired dancers with ear-to-ear grins. This time we mostly hung around Kensal Road, Golborn Road, Portobello, Westbourne Park and, to finish the day off, Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues where we were treated to a somewhat ramshackle ska set by his band, The Trojans. As usual Day 2 was a bit more crowded and edgy than Day 1, but aside from a handbags-at-dawn flareup at one of the soundsystems we didn’t see any trouble to speak of. Biggest drama of the day was, as usual, where the shortest toilet queues could be found.
The photo below might be my favourite from Day 2 – two pirates from one of the mas crews did a double-daggering on a giggling bystander right in front of one of London’s finest – and the cop couldn’t help a fit of the giggles as well. (Generally daggering at Carnival is good-natured but I could see how it would get mightily annoying from a female perspective…)
That’s enough of Carnival for now, but if you’d like to check out the rest of my photos then head on over to my Notting Hill Carnival 2011 Flickr set.
Categories: Festivals and Concerts, London and the UK, Photography
Tags: 2011, carnival, festival, london, nottinghill, nottinghillcarnival, party, photo, photography, streetparty, uk
Tonight, many neighbourhoods in London are on fire, and it seems more trouble is popping up all around, Harlesden being the closest to where I live in Queens Park. Most of the trouble seems to be in Hackney though, well east of us.
But when we looked over that way all we saw was a pretty wicked, horizon-to-horizon rainbow.
Guess there’s still stuff to be happy about in London, after all.
The weekend before last contained that rarest of things: a sunny, mild day in the midst of a London February. It would have been rude not to start the day with a chorizo sandwich in Borough Market and ruder still not to continue on the time-honoured South Bank stroll up to the Hungerford Bridge. I have done this walk so many times I could do it in my sleep, but I never get tired of it. Any excuse, as they say, and I usually bring a camera along because there are always interesting subjects, from the market, the river activity, the South Bank buildings, the other strollers, to street performers, the kids in the Undercroft and always a bit of randomness at some point in the trip.
These, without further ado, were some of the sights I saw that day…. more in my
January/February 2011 Set on Flickr.
And of course I have many more
South Bank shots from years gone by…
I've been a bit coy about posting here so far in January – as usual, work has landed with a thud atop my head. But I thought I would post a few photos from a couple of London weekend walkabouts which I've used to try and acclimatise to my new Canon 7D. It's a whole lot of camera, not dissimilar to my old 40D, but with it's own good and bad points. My only struggle with getting into it was trying to figure out how to change the autofocus mode and select points – I had to climb down off my arrogance hill and actually crack the manual. I have also been toying with video, but I feel it will be a while before I have anything worth posting. But I've generally been very happy with both the responsiveness and the image quality of this camera.
A little bit of snow and the whole place goes to pieces… but at least the white stuff is camera-friendly. These shots are from London and Cambridge, and are from the same winter storm which left 3-4 inches of snow across the Southeast of England and managed to utterly paralyse much of the area's transport network.
London…
… and to Cambridge
Sometimes I get too caught up in the day job and I forget that I don't have to go abroad to use my camera. I have a lot of London shots in my archives and so sometimes it can feel like I am treading over old ground, but then again I am always a slightly different photographer in a slightly different mood with that little bit more experience, or less patience, or more inclination to shoot people today rather than landscape…
More to come, at some point.
In the meantime we have booked a nice little long weekend in Bruges, Ghent, and Brussels, and as it's my fourth time to Bruges I know I will be coming back having done some serious shooting. Must remember to pack the tripod, Bruges all lit up at night is fantastic, especially if you luck into a calm windless night and the canal water is still. Can't wait.
This year we once again walked down from our homes in West London and converged upon the riot of colour, sound, taste, and smells (mainly jerk chicken and spliff) of the Notting Hill Carnival. I love Carnival for the experience and the shooting, and I have learned over the years how best to approach it so as to avoid hassle – basically, I stay around the edge of the route and don’t go into big crowds if I can help it.
Day 1: Sunday August 29th (Children’s Day)
We approached Carnival on Sunday with a mixture of excitement (at the return of Carnival) and trepidation (at the gloomy weather). The weather was mostly cooperative, except for a quite fierce shower that hit in early afternoon. But overall it was not as cold as we had expected and we even managed to get a bit of sunshine here and there. We managed to get into Good Times in the afternoon only by running the extremely-crowded gauntlet of Sancho Panza. Not sure I need to do that again!
Day 2: Monday August 30th (Main Day)
Today there were just two of us walking down from Maida Vale, slightly dazed from a post-Carnival pub session the night before, and we were after a low-key, chilled Carnival experience that was highly dependent on zero hassle. So we basically stayed on the canal edge up by the Trellick Tower and drifted around. But what a day! The sunshine was out in full force and it actually felt like summer. This meant that all the dancers and all of the crowd up this way had giant smiles plastered all over their painted faces, and the Vibe was Good. We hung out by the parade route for some time as the Burrokeet crew stalled out in front of us, and I took the opportunity to get a few closeups of the mas dancers and the crowd. The Burrokeet MC also donated some free beer to us, which I thought was kind.
Categories: Festivals and Concerts, London and the UK, Photography
Tags: 2010, carnival, festival, london, nottinghill, nottinghillcarnival, photo, photography, uk
Last Saturday, on the way to meeting friends in Richmond, we hopped off the train at Kew on a spur-of-the-moment impulse and made our way down through the leafy village streets to Kew Gardens, where we enjoyed the myriad of flora on display, boggled at the rain-starved brown lawns, sweltered in the tropical Victorian greenhouses, and climbed the stairs to walk amongst the treetops at the Xstrata Skywalk. We ended our journey at Richmond Green, to enjoy a pint or two in the sunshine. Ah, summer.
(Geek note: These are all taken with my Canon S90 prosumer compact, which I have been railing against for its poor low-light performance. However it does bear up nicely in daylight, especially when shooting RAW)
Last weekend I had occasion to shoot along the Regent’s Canal (again) and around the East End (again) and South Bank (again). I like to think returning to the same locales over and over again means I am improving my technique, but it’s probably just laziness. At least on Saturday we got a dab of culture as we visited the Whitecross Street Festival, which was a showcase of street art, food and a little music. More here…
