Sunday 27 November 2016

Seeing red in Seven Dials

 
 

 

As my 1st anniversary of attending London Street Photography Meetups rapidly approaches we return back to our familiar ffffff...freezing Meetup weather. Whilst battling with icy extremities we had 5 themes to rapidly capture, with varying degrees of success in my case. The themes are pulled randomly from a hat* (*for hat read - small paper bag that didn't enjoy the large-handed ministrations of Simon), we started with red (ideally three points of red, not just one red thing!), limbs (a favourite of Polly's), then close-up, frame within a frame and road markings. Once you started you continued to see red at every turn though.
 

 

 

 

In my quest to perhaps capture an interesting close-up of some interesting red accessories I got somewhat caught up in a photo shoot with two elegant Japanese models and their crew. I will leave others to post my comical attempts to extricate myself from being in front of their lens, whilst 'surreptitiously' wielding my own camera.

 

 
 

 

 

Friday 18 November 2016

Light hunting!

 
 

Today's London Street Photography Meetup was an exercise of searching for light in and around the Science Museum in South Kensington. For the first challenge we were to look for reflections in shiny objects and glass, possibly even of ourselves. We split up, so as not to look too much like a group, some of us strolled nonchalantly inside, pretending not to know one another.

 

Paul and a couple of others discovered a fabulously shiny tunnel in the Imperial College campus which, after seeing his shots, we all ended up exploring. Well, you can’t keep a good tunnel to yourself!

 

Inside the Science Museum we had the staircases behind the open lifts to explore, the glass walkways and ramps, glass cabinets full of science-y stuff and I even tried something with a shiny desk toy in the inevitable little shop.

 

 

The second challenge was capturing our subjects backlit. Beyond space (yes, there is something beyond) was the multimedia science news gallery with primary panels of light, an escalator leading up to the vivid blue and orange of the IMAX cinema and randomly, the world’s largest tyre (of course!)

 

 

Today's subject matter I felt demanded demanded a colour treatment though the shots around the glass tunnel were rather monochromatic. I couldn't decide how to frame one of my favourite images, the couple entering the shiny tunnel with the reflections of the surrounding buildings reflected above. Or should I just show the silhouettes and the tunnel. As I struggled to decide, I've posted both of them.

Friday 11 November 2016

Welcome to the retro future-verse!

 

 

 
 

 

 

Wow, I think my eyes and brain have just recovered from the neon/argon overload and can sift through, post-process and curate several hundred shots. So here are the fruits of my psychedelic labour at God's Own Junkyard.
 
 
 
 

 

 

This London Street Photography Meetup tasked us with putting together a magazine layout, a double page spread, landscape and portrait, and, leaving some negative space on the DPS for the copy. Oh and we had to think about bleed and our image not being swallowed by the fold, phew!

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

Or we could just concentrate on not having our minds blown by the extreme vibrancy, the cacophony of all that is vivid, rosy-hued and neon in, as the proprietor called it, this retro future-verse.

 

 

 
 

After all the neon, I grabbed a Picasso-esque selfie in a giant glitter ball, as you do! The resultant image is what I suspect that's what my brain looked like too.