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.

Background to the formation of Sepia Set

So we were sitting around in the office shooting the breeze and started talking photographs, cameras and the like. Personally speaking, I have been interested in photography before but it was more of the point and shoot type using the mobile. More enthusiasm rather than skill, if you know what I mean. Even explored joining a photography class but the timing wouldn’t work at all.

Suddenly the brainwave struck, we should get together, take pictures, have beers, learn from each other, have beers, comment/critique each other’s work, have beers, share tips on lenses, storage, photoshop, have beers, and generally have fun.

The first session was held yesterday at Covent Garden. So we sat at Cornish Pastries and insisted Katie name our group because our ideas were seriously suckalicious. So she came up with the  name Sepia Set. Sepia = CP = Cornish Pasties, geddit? Ok ok, so sue us.

We will be uploading our pictures which we think are suitable and looking for comments.