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Photos from Notting Hill Carnival 2011 – Day 2
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.
Photos from Notting Hill Carnival 2011 – Day 1
With a late-afternoon BBQ to host (and run the grill) our usual foray into Carnival for Children’s Day was necessarily curtailed. The attendance was way down from previous years because of fears that some of the troublemakers from the riots earlier in August would kick off in Carnival. But it was trouble-free from what we could see, and the people who showed up were all on fine form – except for a couple of teenagers who had overindulged and embarrassed themselves. Still, we managed to get a bit of the vibe and got our appetites up to head back down today for some more dancing and, well, lots of eating. Can’t wait for the first jerk chicken of the day. In the meantime, here are some of my photos from Day 1…
More photos undoubtably will be on their way in the next 24 hours…
A walk in the Cotswolds
Earlier in August I had the opportunity to join some friends on a walk around the Cotswolds, a lovely area of rolling green hills and chocolate box villages over towards Gloucestershire. While it was a lovely walk, the rolling green hills were a bit of a photographic challenge, it being the middle of the day when we had our walk. But I managed to snag one or two shots I was happy with.
Great photo report from the London riots by AFP’s Leon Neal
I just wanted to share this post from AFP’s Leon Neal, a snapper I have been lucky enough to talk with on many occasions via Twitter (where he goes by @TabascoKid). Very scary stories (and brilliant shots) of what it was like to try and cover the London riots of August 2011 from a press photographer’s perspective:
http://www.leonneal.com/blog/2011/08/12/london-riots-august-2011/
It’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time to check this out.
All I saw was this pretty awesome rainbow…
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.
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.
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.
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
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…
Mortal Coil 