Framedlight

Mairi and I had a day in London and went to 2 photography exhibitions - the Landscape Photographer of the Year at the National Theatre and the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery. We chose those two as they are ending next month. I must admit, much as I am a landscape photographer, I preferred the Taylor Wessing exhibition. People always find other people interesting and the variety of portraits was good. I even bought the book which was £15.00 - very reasonable and then we discovered we could get the ticket price off of it so even less. The only downside of the book being that they did not include much of the description with the photographs. Being on the South Bank was a good opportunity for photography and we also had a visit to Kings cross to see Hugh, my son, for lunch, so a small inclusion from there.

A few photographs from London from a visit made with Mairi and Mike, her cousin from the US. There are three pictures of King's Cross Station, where there is the 'Harry potter Platform'. The last picture is from the courtyard at the V&A.

As I threatened!! More pictures from our expedition to London last week. These were taken with the Fuji XE-1 using the 18-55mm lens. I experimented with setting an auto ISO of 3,200. We were changing environments from dark to light quite frequently and I hoped this would save me from continually changing the ISO. It did work and gave me speeds of 1/30th sec and up (the Fuji has a vibration reduction system). It's not something I would do in landscape photography, but in street where there is a need to react quickly, without fussing over controls I found it quite useful. I usually kept the aperture at f8 or 5.6. All the photographs, bar the first one which was taken outside the Whitechapel Gallery, were taken around Somerset House, over Waterloo Bridge, through to the South Bank and ending up at Waterloo Station. As I said in my previous post the light was overcast and misty. Whitechapel Gallery By Somerset House By Somerset House Thames from ...

Last week I spent a day in the company of friends pursuing some street photography. We started in the Aldgate area, taking in Brick lane and Petticoat Lane market and ended up in the National Theatre. On the way we went to two exhibitions. One on landscape photography at Somerset House which was amazing, and then a collection of Norman Parkinson photos at the National Theatre. The day was quite dim and cloudy, but the light, especially when crossing Waterloo Bridge had a milky misty quality which was quite marvellous. I have a number of pictures from this set so I will post in two blogs. This, the largest number is around  Aldgate. They were all taken with the Fuji XE-1

I happened to be in London yesterday when the sun came out and the temperature rose to the dizzy height of 15 degrees. I had gone to see the Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and when I came out Trafalgar Square was full of basking people enjoying the warmth and light.

I have been trying to effect a few black and white 'urban' pictures to offset the landscape stuff. I have just posted 6 of these on to my website. I do really enjoy making these pictures as they can pack in so much emotion. Even more than the more gentle landscapes. Perhaps it is because of the heritage we now associate with street photography.