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Notting Hill Carnival 2010 in Pictures

September 1, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto Leave a comment

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.

As always there are more pictures over at Flickr in my Notting Hill Carnival 2010 photoset….

Categories: Festivals and Concerts, London and the UK, Photography Tags: 2010, carnival, festival, london, nottinghill, nottinghillcarnival, photo, photography, uk

Last Weekend: Kew Gardens and Richmond

August 5, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto 1 comment

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)

Categories: London and the UK, Photography Tags: kewgardens, london, photo, richmond

A weekend in London

July 27, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto Leave a comment

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…

Categories: London and the UK, Photography Tags: graffiti, london, photo, photography, streetart

(Jet)Blast from the past – Royal Air Tattoo 2004

July 23, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto Leave a comment

Recently, other photographers on Twitter (namely @eosnetwork) mentioned that they had been to the Royal Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford, which has traditionally been the world's largest military-only airshow.

This reminded me that I had some old shots from my own visit to the Tattoo in 2004 languishing on my hard drive. Clearly I never got round to posting them when I joined Flickr about 6 months later. I had a look and sure enough there were some shots there, but far fewer than I remembered taking. These must be the post-edit shots, but clearly hadn't been processed as they came complete with dust spots, under-exposure (common problem with airshow shots) and lots of chroma noise. I had shot these on my first DSLR, a Canon 300D (Digital Rebel) which meant I daren't go above ISO400 for fear of noise, and I was shooting with an el-cheapo 70-300mm zoom. So not my sharpest or cleanest shots, but I managed to rescue a few in Lightroom. There's a Flickr set here, or just enjoy a couple of highlights below.

Categories: London and the UK, Photography Tags: airshow, aviation, photo, photography

Glastonbury 2010 Pictures: Sunday 27th June

July 2, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto Leave a comment

This is my final instalment of photos from the Glastonbury Festival 2010. The Sunday started as another blazing-hot day, but it gradually eased off and by the late afternoon a few welcome clouds brought some relief from the relentless sun. I got back to my gig-going on the main stages and saw a bit of Slash on the Pyramid, Holy F*ck in the John Peel tent, Ray Davies, Faithless and Stevie Wonder on the Pyramid Stage. Oh, and England got bundled out of the World Cup mercilessly. But all in all it was the best weather the festival had seen in years, and Stevie Wonder finishing off the festival made for a fantastic celebration of Glastonbury’s 40th anniversary.

The full set of my Glastonbury 2010 pictures can be found here, or if you’d like to view them in mini-slideshow version then you can find that below (although some of the pictures want to be bigger than this):

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

Categories: Festivals and Concerts, Photography Tags: festival, glasto, glastonbury, photo, photography

Some professionals shoot Glastonbury 2010

July 1, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto Leave a comment

In advance of my last, decidedly amateur set of photos being blogged here, I want to point towards some photos taken by actual jobbing photogs, some of which are just stunning.

As per last year, Boston.com’s Big Picture (a truly excellent, themed showcase site for press photography) has done a feature on Glastonbury 2010 exhibiting some of the finest pro work to come out of the festival. There’s some truly fantastic work in here. My favourite might just be this one, by Ian Gavan for Getty:

And as per usual, a significant number of the photos come from Leon Neal of AFP (AKA the Tabasco Kid, AKA @tabascokid on Twitter) who has come out with some absolute crackers. He’s just posted two new blog entries, one focusing on the main areas and concert shots, and one that is more “off-piste” (similar to my own meanderings on my “photo mission” on Saturday night). Leon has been kind enough to correspond with me over the last year or so and it’s been fun to compare notes in the runup to, and aftermath of, the festival. Clearly different approaches, but then my livelihood does not depend on this.

Blog 1 – A Worthy Cause for Celebration

Blog 2 – They say it changes…

Annoyingly, Leon has a few shots that are of exactly the same subjects, but executed with just a touch more professionalism, and that’s what earns him an “Utter Bastard” label from me today. Case in point, here’s my image of a lantern sculpture in the Green Futures field:

And here’s Leon’s. Damn him.

Well, practice makes perfect.

My final picture post from Glastonbury 2010 will be online sometime Friday. Then I can get on with my life 🙂

Categories: Photo and Tech News Tags: bigpicture, glasto, glastonbury, photo, photography, thebigpicture

Glastonbury 2010 Pictures: Saturday 26th June

June 30, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto Leave a comment

Saturday was rumoured to be the hottest day of the festival, and I had had enough of massive crowds in stifling heat on the Friday. This combined with the fact that there weren't all that many acts on the main stages that I had a burning desire to see, meant that I took a punt on the Saturday and decided just to avoid the main stages entirely and keep to the smaller, out-of-the-way parts of the festival (including some quite bizarre late-night areas) and just follow my nose. Some of the time I was with friends, some of the time alone, and in fact I ended up going off on a little photo journey around the site post-midnight (for the first time ever with a tripod) and manage to snag some shots I had never gotten close to achieving before. I managed to see some pretty cool stuff along the way, and was very thrilled to be able to catch Imelda May's rockabilly act at the Acoustic Stage. It hit just the right note for me. And I saw a lot that made me laugh, including the "Hug a Troll" guys below.

Final set (Sunday) should be coming up tomorrow evening…

Categories: Festivals and Concerts, London and the UK, Photography Tags: glasto, glastonbury, photo, photography, uk

Taste of London 2010

June 21, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto Leave a comment

We had a great day out on Saturday at the Taste of London Festival despite some inclement British summertime weather. I say "despite" as a little June chill provided the perfect excuse to indulge in some typically wintry dishes such as suckling pig (excellent from Fino) and some warming vodka-based refreshments.

Here are a few highlights (full photoset with descriptions here)

Categories: Festivals and Concerts, London and the UK, Photography Tags: festival, food, london, photo, photography, tasteoflondon, uk

Glastonbury “LOVE” Picture included in the Guardian Reader’s Gallery

June 11, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto Leave a comment

I had the honour today to discover that one of my old standby Glastonbury shots had made it onto the Guardian Reader's Gallery which just went up today.

This picture also had an Honourable Mention on the official Glastonbury website competition back in 2004. It's the gift that keeps on giving…

Categories: Festivals and Concerts, London and the UK, Photography Tags: glasto, glastonbury, guardian, photo, photography, published

Istanbul Photo Report

May 27, 2010 lukerobinsonphoto 2 comments

A couple of weekends back we traipsed over to Istanbul for a bit of a long weekend, unexpectedly prolonged by the impending BA strike – so, happily, we ended up with 4 nights there instead of 3. It gave us a vital extra half-day to explore, and to cover off all of my checklist: no, not the sights. Those were great, but I am talking restaurants. Istanbul is a bit of a culinary grand tour, more than just “meat on a stick” as pointed out by Anthony Bourdain. Of course, on the way to those restaurants, kebapcis, pide salonus, and lahmacun joints there were many sights to behold.

As usual my trip consisted of a fine mix of photography and hedonism. I can’t share too much of the hedonism with you (aside from saying that the Istanbullus are not shy of a party – tens of thousands of people in the streets of Beyoglu) – but I will of couse share some photos. So without further ado, here are some quite randomly-chosen favourite photos from the ones I kept. You can find these and the other 80-odd photos at my Flickr set: Istanbul – May 2010.