I don’t think I shall be attending Notting HIll Carnival this year; last year was too stressful with the large crowds and my mini altercation with a police officer.

I think I shall sit this one out and see how the police officers behave this year.

Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event which takes place in Notting Hill, London, England each August, over two days (Sunday and the following bank holiday).

[Canon EOS 5D | ISO 100 | 148mm | 1/800 seconds | F/4 | Flash Fired]

Hammersmith Bridge is a crossing of the River Thames in west London, just south of the Hammersmith town centre area of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham on the north side of the river. It allows road traffic and pedestrians to cross to Barnes (in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames) on the south side of the river. The current bridge is the second permanent bridge on the site.

The current suspension bridge was designed by noted civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette. It was opened by the Prince of Wales on 11 June 1887. With much of the supporting structure built of wrought iron, it is 700 feet (210 m) long and 43 feet (13 m) wide and cost £82,117 to build.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_Bridge

01 December 2008; 1511 hours
[Canon EOS 5D | ISO 400 | 35mm | 1/640 seconds | F/5.6]

Sunset reflecting off a DLR Train in motion

[Canon EOS 5D | ISO 1600 | 35mm | 1/50 seconds | F/3.2]

Just pulling out of Poplar DLR Station

[Canon EOS 5D | ISO 1600 | 16mm | 1/50 seconds | F/2.8]

Archive image from last year.

Looking towards Haymarket on a wet October Evening.

Candid photograph of a couple found just as I exited the tube station one evening.

11 July 2008

[Canon EOS 5D | ISO 1600 | 135mm | f/2.0 | 1/100 seconds]

From a visit to the South Bank Fountain on 12 July 2008 as part of the photo-a-day project.

Another candid image of a different couple taken on the same day at the London South Bank Fountain was posted last July.

[Canon EOS 5D | ISO 1600 | 85mm | f/2.0 | 1/250 seconds]

This is the view of The London Ark from the 8th floor office where I work.

The Ark, so called in reference to its hull-like profile, was designed by celebrated architect Ralph Erskine, for Swedish developers Ake Larson and Pronator.

A lunchtime photograph of Hammersmith Bridge given the Lomo Treatment

"A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes."
Sam Abell

On Day 171 (June 19 2008), I sacrificed too much ISO for a decent hand-holding speed; really gutted about the grain in the picture.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primrose_Hill:

Primrose Hill is a hill of 256 feet (78 m) located on the north side of Regent’s Park in North London, England, and also the name for the surrounding district. The hill has a clear view of Central London to the south-east, as well as Belsize Park and Hampstead to the north.

Primrose Hill is a hill located on the north side of Regent’s Park in north London, and also the name for the surrounding district.

The hill has a clear view of central London.

Like Regent’s Park the area was once part of a great chase appropriated by Henry VIII and became Crown property in 1841. In 1842 an Act of Parliament secured the land as public open space.

From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primrose_Hill

Tower 42 is the tallest skyscraper in the City of London and the fifth tallest in London as a whole. It was originally built for the National Westminster Bank (NatWest), hence its former name, the NatWest Tower.
Seen from above, the tower closely resembles the NatWest logo (three chevrons in a hexagonal arrangement). The tower, designed by Richard Seifert, is located at 25 Old Broad Street. It was built by John Mowlem & Co between 1971 and 1979, and opened in 1980, costing a total of £72 million (approximately £222 million today).

It is 183 metres (600 ft) high, which made it the tallest building in the UK until the topping-out of One Canada Square in Docklands in 1990.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_42

A rollerblader navigates the streets of London with a hockey stick

Harrods is a department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air Harrods.

The store occupies a 4.5-acre site and has over one million square feet of selling space in over 330 departments. This makes Harrods one of the largest department stores in the world together with Macy’s New York (the UK’s second-biggest shop, Oxford Street’s Selfridges is a little over half the size with 540,000-square-foot of selling space).

The Harrods motto is Omnia Omnibus Ubique —- All Things for All People, Everywhere. Several of its departments, including the seasonal Christmas department and the Food Hall are world famous.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrods

This photograph of the sun setting over the City of London was shot from Canary. I used a 135mm then cropped to this size because I left my 70-200mm zoom at home.

Big Ben is famous for its reliability.

This is due to the skill of its designer, the lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison, later Lord Grimthorpe.

[...]

Together with an enclosed, wind-proof box sunk beneath the clockroom, the Great Clock’s pendulum is well isolated from external factors like snow, ice and pigeons on the clock hands, and keeps remarkably accurate time.

[...]

Despite heavy bombing the clock ran accurately throughout the Blitz. It slowed down on New Year’s Eve 1962 due to heavy snow, causing it to chime in the new year 10 minutes late.

The clock had its first and only major breakdown in 1976. The chiming mechanism broke due to metal fatigue on 5 August 1976, and was reactivated again on 9 May 1977. During this time BBC Radio 4 had to make do with the pips.

It stopped on 30 April 1997, the day before the general election, and again three weeks later.

On Friday, 27 May 2005, the clock stopped ticking at 10.07 p.m., possibly due to hot weather (temperatures in London had reached an unseasonal 31.8 °C/90 °F). It resumed keeping time, but stalled again at 10.20 p.m. and remained still for about 90 minutes before starting up again.

On 29 October 2005, the mechanism was stopped for approximately 33 hours so that the clock and its chimes could be worked on. It was the lengthiest maintenance shutdown in 22 years.

From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ben

This cyclist on his Penny-farthing was seen in Central London on 28 November 2008.

I managed to fire off two not-too-focussed images and this was the sharpest one.

According to WikiPedia’s article on Penny-farthing:

Penny-farthing is a term used to describe a type of bicycle with a large front wheel and a much smaller rear wheel that was popular after the velocipede, or boneshaker, until the development of the safety bicycle. They were the first machines to be called ‘bicycles’. The description ‘penny-farthing’ refers to British penny and farthing coins, one much larger than the other so that the side view resembles a penny leading a farthing, though this expression does not appear in print until 1927.

Exterior of Canary Wharf Tube Station flanked by skyscrapers on a twilight evening in March 2008

09 June 2008

I can no longer recall why I decided to shoot the swans at 16mm with the lens close to the water . . . it looked like fun at the time!

From WikiPedia: The Round Pond is a pond in Kensington Gardens, London, in front of Kensington Palace. It is, however, not at all round, but more like a square with protuberances at the corners.

08 June 2008; 2242 Hours.

Lensbaby.

07 June 2008; 2220 Hours.

(The longer days were killing me at this point and I made lots of mistakes and gaffs on day 159).

Normally, I would like to get close to the guy on the bench but he was a homeless guy wandering around the platform and feeding off the leftovers left by the commuters and I wasn’t sure if I ought to photograph this.

06 June 2008; 2304 Hours

05 June 2008, 2200 Hours