Archive
A sunny winter’s walk along the South Bank
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.
Al Balad (“The Old Town”), Yanbu, Saudi Arabia
The Canon 7D on the Streets of London
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.
Christmas in the Texas Hill Country [Photos]
Winter hits the UK with a wallop (Photos)
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.
Sunset over Paddington Rec, Maida Vale
Photos from Bruges, Ghent and Brussels
Last weekend we took a short city-break to get away from London for a bit and managed to find somewhere even colder to go in late November: Belgium. We spent a positively brassic 3 days and 4 nights in Bruges, Ghent and Brussels. I must say that due to the weather I never really felt like I got into my photographic groove – when it wasn't (below) freezing and overcast with dull winter half-light, it was heaving down with snow or gale-force winds. But I managed to get a few shots anyway, and a couple of them turned out to be decent.
A somewhat motley collection of London photos from the past few weeks
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…
No terror arrests in 10,000 police stop-and-searches
More than 100,000 people were stopped and searched by police under counter-terrorism powers last year but none of them were arrested for terrorism-related offences, according to Home Office figures published today.
The statistics show that 504 people out of the 101,248 searches were arrested for any offence – an arrest rate of 0.5%, compared with an average 10% arrest rate for street searches under normal police powers.
The figures prompted the former Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis to call for the controversial policy to be scrapped.
"This astonishing fact of no terrorism-related arrests, let alone prosecutions or convictions, in over 100,000 stop and searches, demonstrates what a massively counter-productive policy this is," said Davis.
Yet another silly photo contest / rights grab from the NYT
I was sent a link to a travel photo contest over the weekend – the New York Times’ annual Why We Travel competition. Great, thinks I, I am sure I have a photo or two which would fit the bill here. But a couple of things have stopped me in my tracks.
(Please limit your contributions to one or two photos, and do not submit photos that have been altered in any way.)
You are agreeing that we can use your submission in all manner and media of The New York Times and that we shall have the right to authorize third parties to do so.
Mortal Coil 