The First Post

The "Arrival"

As a blog virgin this is a new experience - a whole new world, with new horizons and opportunities opening up before me. So here goes……..

We collected outside the underground station with bated breath as each of us steadily arrived. Bd with his brand new lens and Katie with her new camera, collected from the post office 3 hours earlier a fully charged battery and no SD card – Bd to the rescue from somewhere in the depths of his back pack a spare SD card magically appears.

Like Bd this was only my second outing with my new camera the Canon S90. However unlike Bd I am hanging onto the view that “size doesn’t matter – it is what you do with it that counts”, and have found that the S90 is “Compact but beautifully formed”. Not for me the prospect of lugging around multiple kilos of Camera bodies, lenses, flashes, tripods……. Etc. the S90 fits neatly in my pocket enabling me to achieve the first rule of photography “have your camera with you”. For me this is key and whilst with a 200mm lens on a DSLR you can covertly photograph the nasal hair of the man across the street innocently minding his own business – this is far, far, outweighed by the benefits of being able to slip the camera away into the folds of a jacket.

To the main event – a Saturday morning in Covent Garden three weeks before Christmas. A sobering event to any grown man, BUT we are not shopping and this made all the difference.

We finished our drinks, resolved to meet up in an hour and scattered to the four corners of the garden each setting off purposefully with the aim of capturing the perfect moment………..

So…. what to capture?

The "Artistes"

The Invisible Man - Clever but not attracting the crowds

Gold staue however was a continuous draw - especially to the young and the young ladies. This girl's expression says it all.

Is this any job for a grown man - to sit in a box with face make up, pretending to be a dog ?

Whatever your views the children enjoyed it. I especially liked the way I caught the flash on the lady's camera.

Mont Martre comes to Covent Garden.

This was my favourite artist. The eyes especially came to life as he sculpted from the photo in the background.

The "Atmosphere"

A small attempt to capture the atmosphere....

The tourist

The People

The Food & the Colour

The Reindeer

The "Arty"

I did cheat here - I saw these on my way to the underground so they are not strictly "Covent Garden" - but they are very close!

The “Analysis”

We all had a good morning, Patrick Litchfield won’t lose any sleep but we all had a good go and achieved some pleasing if not earth shattering results. Luca had a couple of really nice compositions ready to show us, but I suspect that he spent his last 10 minutes photo-shopping on his laptop – and we had come out to get away from shopping! They were good shots none the less.

The morning was a great opportunity to stop and to step out of time with the express purpose of pitting yourself against, people, composition and light.

To top it all we finished with CPs – that can’t be bad.

Covent Garden - Part 2 IT IS ALL TICKETYBOO!

..you would reasonably expect that as part of a group of 4 strongly willed (but not equally gifted) photographers unleashed in the side-streets of Covent Garden I would come out with lots of shots of unusual sights ..... and here you are .... a few of the very MOST usual sights of Covent Garden!

...and more coming.... but do not hold your breath

funkycolors

Photo Essay: Covent Garden, London, BD, Dec 2010

So I finally took my new Canon-500 out for a test ride. The light was reasonably good and sunny from 1115 to noon but then it became the usual gloomy London self. Anyway, took about 100 pictures. And then thought of 5 themes and then deleted with a vengeance. So here are the photos.

#1. The Waiting Men

I noticed several men just hanging around. What was interesting was their totally blank faces, obviously waiting for their significant others to turn up after shopping. Except for one chap who was sitting and spotted me taking his photo. Just look at their expressions, bored, resigned, tired, in their own worlds.

   
   
 

 

Here’s the slide show.

#2. The Cornish Pasty

We were up in the 1st floor of the Cornish Pasty place and took some photographs of the wooden panels and nice areas. This time, i applied some grey scaling to some of the photos. 

The first one was normal colour while the second one, of the same area but without the people, was grey scale.  The shadows were interesting to me. Looked almost like one of the old Japanese style inns.

The grey scaling seems to have brought out the interplay of lights and shadows on the left. On the right hand side is a wood panelled window. Highly polished, reflecting the sunlight, the grain of the wood was shown a bit. Not one of the best efforts, as it seems.
 

The slide show here.

#3: The Photographers

Here’s some photo’s of us horsing around. As you can see, everybody is all nicely dressed up as a nerd except for Bob who looks like a photographer.

Luca explaining something complicated to Katie
Faffing around with the cameras

Me taking a pic of Luca who is taking a pic of me and then Bob is taking a pic of Luca while Katie is digging into her camera..

#4: Covent Garden Sights

Now some photographs of odd sod bits that caught my eye. Not sure

Nice pink cheeks, a smiling copper, sunshine.

Grey colours, the sandstone pink shades were not coming out at all, and this was at full zoom.

The NHS are with you, a car and 2 bikes. Nice splash of colour.

 

Looking up to a set of Christmas decorations and looking down at an opera singer singing for dosh. She had nice hair, but a regretfully empty donations bowl.

Collections of chocolate covered raisins, road dividers and race marshals.


Rows of empty chairs

All over the place

You will meet a tall, dark stranger…and the funny fat old moustachioed bloke next to you taking pictures is a very smart handsome man who is tall and dark….

The slide show in slightly bigger resolution.

#5 Colours

Despite the horrible weather and light, I got some very good pictures of colours. No need to describe them hopefully.

The slide show.

There is so much to learn, Luca and Bob are light years ahead of me. Its the composition which is important and as you can make out, we see the same subject and then come up with totally different views. Absolutely amazing.