Portfolio in Yellow

I've spent a little time in the last year or so wondering up and down the South Bank in London, sometimes with a camera, sometimes without. There are always exhibitions to visit in Tate Modern (apart from anything else the South Bank provides a convenient short cut from Waterloo) and it's usually full of people going about their activities. But the architecture is pretty drab, 1950's conrete - except for some of the stairwells. One has been painted bright yellow, another blue and a third red. I 've been photographing that yellow stairwell off and on over this time  ... and here is a selection ...

The bright yellow can look stunning against a blue sky, and if the light is right - from the side - the textures  are apparent.

Don't think any 2 of this selection was taken at the same time, and I've got many more. I'm beginning to think in terms of building up a portfolio - possibly in yellow - based around them. Will have to decide whether to include my images of the blue stairwell, or the red stairwell also ......

A Few More Exhibitions

I've visited a few more photographic exhibitions in central London in the last month or so - "Shadow Catchers: Camera-Less Photography" at the V&A, "Take a View" at the National Theatre and "World Press Photo 10" at the Royal Festival Hall. Ironically, of the 3 exhibitions visited, the one I enjoyed least was the only one for which  I had to pay an entry fee - albeit only £5 - which was "Shadow Catchers" exhibition at the V&A, It shows the work - of 5 contemporary photographers - photographic images made without the use of cameras. Good to see contemporary work - and one offs - but they seemed to be too abstract for my liking.

The other 2 exhibitions were both free. Free exhibitions are great for encourging  repeat visits which I had to make to properly view the "Take a View" landscape exhibition. Shame the first time around I was with people who were in a hurry on somewhere else. Their loss, not mine. Having said that, the second visit was almost as bad, as the exhibition space was crowded with a pre theatre audience. Once they'd gone into the performance, I could enjoy the pictures. Liked the large black and whites. Wondered how some of the photographs got into the exhibition - this is supposed to be a Landscape Exhibition , and whilst a section is classified as "Urban View", several of the selections seemed to be more reportage or documentary, or even portaiture.

World Press Photo 10 despite the "10" in the title, featured press photos from 2009. Seeing the exhibition in late 2010,  I had to rely on memory to put a context to the photographs, and if the photo was taken early in 2009 its almost 2 years ... in some cases this isnt a issue, in other cases it is. Good to see several sequences of photographs on show, as well as individual images.       

London Parade - 2011

This year - 2011 - the London New Year's Day Parade had it's 25th Anniversary. Whilst I've not been attending it that long - never mind photographing it - the time has a special significance for me because the parade has been around in London for almost as long as I have. Anyway, the overcast day which was January 1st and the threat of rain here in London didn't put me off bringing in my cameras and trying to get a few photos.
.
Like last year the parade began in Piccadilly and wound it's way through central London,  finishing in Parliament Square some hours later - you can read my post (with some photos) of the 2010 event here. I like to go where the performers are setting up, and get in amongst them whilst they get ready for the parade itself and this year was no different for me - I headed for Berkeley Square and Berkeley Street. The first photograph below could almost pass as a self-portrait  (there are no prizes for spotting me !)

One advantage of using a digital camera (it took me quite some time to convert from film) was - on this occasion - was te ability to change ISO and keep shooting. I started the shoot at 200, and as the light became worse, changed to 400, ending on 800, as rain threatened.  

Didn't take as many photos as last time - about 150 rather than almost 400, but on an initial inspection some of them at least (well 1 or 2 maybe) look promising, whilst others are distinctly soft. Perhaps I should have tried 400 or 800 from the start, or brought a flashgun as many of the other photographers who were around at the time. Perhaps I will next time, and maybe I'll try photographing the end of the parade then, not the start ....

Enchanted Wood at Syon Park

 Another visit to the Enchanted Wood, in nearby Syon Park, on a very cold Sunday evening just past. I'ts almost become an annual event for me; its only open for a few weekends this time of year and I've been before - the photo in the header of this blog (at the time of posting) was taken there last year.

I've posted some of last year's pictures in ths blog here and here   Some of the light displays around the trees had changed, and I was trying to get something different. The light levels are low, and so a tripod is really necessary -  some of the exposures were in seconds - yet some of the other visitors were handholding their cameras. Others were using on-camera flash. I wonder if they were disappointed with their results. I took fewer pictures than last year, and on an initial review, this years selection looks promising. I may think different when I print them.

It wasn't an evening for hanging around - the temperature in the car when we left read -2 C. Not that I cared a that point - a hot latte in the cafe on the way out to the car park helped.

   

Fixed Focal Length

So far I haven't posted the exercises for my evening photoclass in any particular order, something I'll rectify in future - you may have read some of my previous posts on some of the other exercises in the last couple of weeks. So for now, its back to the initial exercise for this post - "Fixed Focal Length". Most of us in the class (me included) were using a variety of lenses where the photographer can vary the focal length, raher than using a prime lens. The idea of this exercise was to set the lens at one focal length and stick with that same length for the entire shoot.- you may walk backwards or forwards if you have to, or even choose compostions which work ....

Anyways I put a 70-210mm on my camera and headed for nearby Richmond with the idea of taking some pictures along the Thames riverfront. When I got there I set the focal length of the lens to 85 mm.. Unfortunately for me the light was poor and flat that day and so, while I took many pictures, the results when looking at the screen on the back of the camera looked uninteresting. They can often look better on a larger computer screen later but I wasn't optimistic. And walking backwards and forwards isn't necessarily a good idea beside a river, or in some cases possible !

I like picture with bold (often primary) colours, and some colour in a side street leading away from the river caught my attention - a large fence painted mainly bright yellow but also with some red.  So the pictures just taken of the riverside were quickly forgotten, in favour of these -

All the pictures were taken with the lens at 85 mm, and its relatively easy to walk to and fro in a side street, dodging the occasional van or bicycle.

The results, whilst not brilliant. I seen and done a lot worse. Preferred my texture pictures, in the previous post.  There are some texture to be seen here, which better (side) lighting would have brought out. I'll go back there again when the light is better, and if the fence is still coloured, I''ll re-shoot.

I had these pictures here (amongst others) printed (6" by 4" size) by Tesco by their in-store one hour photo service, in order to show the prints in class. What a waste, am not sure if I'll use them again . They don't seem to know the difference between Yellow and Orange, the delivered prints were distinctly ORANGE.

Night time - downtown Twickenham

Our evening photoclass took time out of the class room the other week. Now that winter is on its way, it is dark by the time we get to class, an ideal opportunity to try out our tripods and long exposures with some night time photography in this case nearby Twickenham. I'm sure Twickenham has many attributes, but a vibrant night life is not up there amongst them - at least outside of match days at the rugby stadium - and there was no match on the day of our visit. Having said that we were not looking for reportage type photographs, and the object of the exercise was tripods/long exposure and not using flash.

 

I had been concerned about getting the correct colour balance, and set the camera to auto for this shoot, put the camera through its paces and set hoe it handled the conditions - street lights, traffic and moon; after all this was supposed to be a learning experience not a professional shoot nor a hunt for potential competition winners. Anyways - what ever about the subsequent pictures turned out to be, the initial shots of some street side (eg Heath Road, above) was acceptable. As you can see from the other pictures we ended up beside the river Thames for the remainder of the evening.  Even late in  the evening, the local airport Heathrow makes its presence felt - the long exposures used captures the aircraft coming into land as trails of light - as can be seen in the third and last pictures. And of course the long exposures mean that moving people (also the some of the local bird population, do they ever sleep ?) become blured.

Didn't capture any potential prize winners, or exhibition pictures, but then I wasn't expecting to. A useful exercise, one which I'd plan on doing again..

Self-Portrait

Another exercise for my BTEC evening photography was Portrait. That's fine I thought, I'll bring in some from my recent trip to the Notting Hill Carnival, this year, when I concentrated mainly on "street" portraits, as distinct from the Carnival as an event. No such luck for this exercise, the catch was the portraits had to be self-portraits.

Hmmm, don't want to put my face up here.

Winter hadn't quite arrived here in London just yet, there were still some sunny days around, and I'd been developing some ideas for the last few months - photographically - I'd been making images of people and their shadows. You can read my previous post on these pictures here. Anyways, I thought I'd make use of the sunny days (while they were still available !) and combine the self-portrait exercise with the shadow idea ... and here are some of the results ...

 The photographs were taken on 3 different days and at 4 different locations. I'm not sure I like the results, especially the 3rd and 4th in the sequence - I was very concious of the patterns made by the different coloured paving stones and was looking to make a pleasing composition. Think I prefer the other shadow pictures taken previously, they've got more mood.