I must admit to have been finding opportunities to leave Great Yarmouth for work or leisure particularly welcome recently, for a number of reasons...
However I rarely do publish or even post process images taken on my travels, often because work obligations take over and I find myself blogging what people are expecting to see rather than my personal work. This is all well and good of course, but my personal work is my development as a person and a photographer, a documentary of what catches my eye, and the feelings that evokes, as well as an opportunity for creative freedom I sometimes crave.
The following is a set of images I captured last weekend in London, totally shot using a 20mm 2.8 wideangle lens. I have always been a fan of wideangles and I love the fact that you can get in close and personal to document happenings and capture great big objects in all their magnificence. Being a prime lens user means I am used to working with a fixed lens and am happy to move around to capture the perspective I am looking for and I certainly don't need to practice using just one lens for a length of time because that is what I do 90 percent of the time.
OK, so we start with an image from the British Museum... this is my take on a well known shot... love the symmetry in the glass structure...
next, the delicious view from one of the tantalising displays in a Patisserie Valerie outlet. Oh my! What wonderful gateux and millefeuilles to look at! I can only imagine how good they taste....
Strolling towards Camden we came across the Elms Lesters Painting rooms and stared at the unusual tall door at the back. Seems like they may have very large paintings on display there! :)
the contradiction in styles... the cold and functional highrise facade warmed up by the orange hue contrasting with the burger graffiti in the window...
mysterious mix of necrophilia and haloween-iness.... at Thames and Hudson
and can anybody enlighten me as to what this means? To me it's a mix of tetris and pacman... :)
straight towards the mad and eclectic mix of people and wares in Camden Market...
and a well exectued coffee.... twice!
I don't like crowds, and I guess the feeling is mutual. Love how the 20mm captures that documentary element and skews the perspective creating a sense of space that just did not exist... are these people real or are they caricatures?
shop fronts that would not look out of place in Great Yarmouth....
some stuff that caught my eye....
the architecture and expressions captured...
some spaces look like they were designed from comics - they momentarily took me back to my childhood staring at 2000AD
a myriad of stalls full of stuff for collectors and holidaymakers, confusion in shape, style and colour ... This is London aka This is Camden Town! :)
Loved the Proud Camden Music venue in the heart of the Stables Market, what a place! Gallery by day, shrine to music by night. Feel jealous of the photographers who are able to shoot gigs there. I felt a tangible aura from the place as I photographed it....
and the very best of the Camden stables, bedecked for Halloween....
Nothing better than a cold beer (cider in my case!) after a long walk in a bustling market. Pity it's £4 a tipple at the Camden Eye but the lovely trompe d'oeil deco makes it excusable! ...
and who says portraits need to be taken at a comfortable distance and using anything from a 50 to 85mm lens? This is Paul looking totally relaxed photographed with my 20mm. My take is that rules are there to be broken and my day with a fixed lens is just about that...!
Liquid refreshments done we then took the Underground to continue with our travels.... there's always time for a quick snap in manual mode for a long exposure to get some quick motion blur on the escalator....
followed by a flying visit to the lovely St Pancras station, to admire the magnificent architecture - just awesome!
and had a look at the sculptural tribute to Sir John Betjeman...
as well as the lovely and powerful 'brief encounters' sculpture from Paul Day which left me in awe.... beautiful, intriguing and a point of discussion...
That's all from me today... I hope you liked this blog post and that my point of view as a photographer is intriguing to you....
Look forward to your comments.... :)
x