Carnival 2017

     The Notting Hill Carnival has been taking place, annually, in the streets around Notting Hill, west London, at the end of August, since the mid 1960's. Visited it again this year, on its second day, last Monday. It is a very colourfully event, and it attracts large crowds. The music systems - both static and on moving floats make it rather LOUD. Anyways here are a few of my photos taken this time around  .....

        While capturing some of the colour and the characters at the Carnival, my images don't show anything of the music and sounds, nor the aromas of the many barbeques

Night Carnival 2011

I didn't go to the Notting Hill Carnival this year, for a variety of reasons - apart from anything else (the possibility of riots didn't exactly encourage me to attend) -  my ears are recovering from both last and the previous year's Carnival. Maybe I'm getting old. But Carnival is definitely LOUD, and I wonder if the hearing of any of the performers is adversely affected.

Anyway, I did make it to the Night Carnival, which is part of the Thames Festival, held a couple of weeks later, in September. Its an annual event also, and I've before and noticed that some of the performers from Notting Hill turn up at Night Carnival but with a lot less decibels. It kicks off around 7ish in the evening , as its getting dark, and the participants/performers carry lanterns and torches it can be spectacular.

This year the rain at the beginning didn't help, and the route had been reversed from previous years - now starting behind the Royal Festival Hall , crossing the Thames byway of Blackfriars Bridge, and then turning upstream to Embankment.

Some performers taking the steps down from Waterloo Bridge prior to taking  part.

Another Night Carnival

The now annual Thames Festival came around again on September 11/12, with its Night Carnival on the evening of  the 12th. I had tried to take some photograph last years event, and despite some success with one of them achieved mainly disappointing results (please look at my previous posts on Thames Festival), and so I wanted to try again.

I managed to take a number of images, but on an initial look at the results, nothing  stands out of the pack.

I'm sure I'll have more time during the coming winter months to study the photographs in more detail. I'm thinking now that I may have enough images from this (and last) year's event to put together a sequence of, say 5 to 10 images, showing something the flavour of the Night Carnival, rather than looking for stand alone

 images.  Putting together panels/sequences of 5 to 10 images on  subject is something I've been get into lately - a sort of short photo essay.

Carnival Time Again

How time flies. This time last year - the August Bank Holiday in England - I went to the Notting Hill Carnival in west London for the first time in many years. Now it's a year on and here I go again.

Thankfully there was some half-way decent light - photographically speaking - the people in the event are fast moving and rarely stay put for long, and I didn't want to have to use either flash or slow shutter speeds - time enough for that for the upcoming Night Carnival in a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to doing an edit of my images captured over the weekend - probably down to about 10 or so, from the 300 taken.

Competition Win

Some good news for me during the week - one of my photos won a competition at my local Photographic Society. The competition is the George Bunzl Cup which is for colour pictorial prints, one of a series of Open Challenge Cups within the Society. Here it is, at least in digital form -

The photo was taken during the Night Carnival, at last year's Thames Festival in central London. The Festival was held in mid September, and you can see some more of my (less successful) photos of the event in previous posts from around then. The bluring effect of the people was obtained by using a combination of a slow shutter speed and an off-camera flash (ie not the built in rubbish flash), the print was an A3+ size on Somerset Enhanced satin paper (wonderful paper !), in a 40cm x 50cm Antique White window mount.

Night Carnival

Sunday turned out windy, cool, overcast, dull and with no interesting light at all. So decided to pass on the daytime events and head straight for the Night Carnival. This was to begin around dusk, along the Victoria Embankment so overcast conditions were not an issue. The Night Carnival was colourful and spectacular, I recognised a few participants from Notting Hill a few weeks back (tonight's Night Carnival was much quieter !) Took some photos using flash (using monopod for some), but don't think the results did the Carnival justice. Shame. Next time ?

Thames Festival

Had a good day yesterday at the Thames festival in central London. A sunny day with warm sunshine and many activities to photograph. Arrived in Waterloo in good humour on the train only to loose it as the Underground decided to have a signal failure on the Jubilee line then and suspend it from Waterloo to London Bridge - I had planned to take the tube to London Bridge and then walk back (upstream) towards the South Bank Centre.

Anyways the good humour did return later on at the Festival. Made it as far as Southwark Bridge which had many stalls selling exotic food and drink, long tables and chairs decked out ...... and the Mariachi performers (there were only 3 when I was there, is this too small to be a mariachi band ?)



They brought back many (good) memories of my trip to Mexico - last time I heard that type of music I was actually there - and that was in 1996. How time flies.

The Fire Garden outside the Tate Modern was spectacular, but as I hadn't brought my tripod (it weighs kilos and far too heavy to drag around a crowed event such as this) or a mono pod, haven't managed to take any half decent photos. Think I'll return this evening for the Night Carnival and Fireworks - with mono pod.

More from Carnival

Its now 2 days after Carnival, my ears have finally stopped ringing and my hearing is back to normal. What the pictures below may show is something of the colour and party atmosphere of the Carnival - but they fail miserably to show are the sounds and smells of the event.






My memories of August Bank Holiday Monday last in Notting Hill include the aromas of bar-b-queuing food, many decibels from the sound systems and colour.

Carnival Time

Went to the Carnival in Notting Hill at the weekend for the first time in years. I'm not really into the music and there's an awful lot of people crowded around some narrow streets, so after visiting it after I first moved to London in 1985 I tended to ignore the event. But somewhat unexpectedly I enjoyed it this time. I'll post some images taken over the 2 days here in due course.... Anyways on my way home on Sunday evening whilst checking what pictures I'd taken during the day, two passing gentlemen asked me to take their photo.

"What for ?" I asked.

"Because we're happy" they replied.

Not wanting to get into an argument I obliged.

Here is the result -



Though I say so myself, not a bad portrait.