Well trade here seems to be rather light, so here, given that writing adequately is beyond me just now, are some photos I took earlier. Earlier this evening to be exact. The light was fading fast, but a few of my snaps came out okay.
I like the effect you get when the background is a London bus. Lots of colour, but blurred, and if the figures in the foreground come out well, it can look great.
As you can see, I like to take pictures of people who are taking pictures. Sometimes, as here, I include the people they are photographing. And look, over on the right is a lady posing for another photographer away to the right. I only noticed her after I got home. The horses are a big fountain statue just to the edge of Piccadilly Circus, and are, I think, much more impressive than Eros.
This next bunch of people are doing a characteristic digital camera thing which Real Photographers never do. They are looking together at the picture they have just taken on that little TV type screen that digital cameras mostly now have.
But now here is a shot of London life of a quite different sort. The London Underground is a creeking, groaning, deafeningly loud, hideously crowded … Underground. But they are amazingly quick to put up the posters about any problems they are having.
When I see posters like these, I am part angry, and part impressed. Such a fuck up, and so courteously explained!
I cannot end on this grim note, so here is a happier Underground related picture, this time of a Coca Cola advert done in the lights of Piccadilly Circus, which are supposedly famous, but usually rather feeble, I think. But this was nice. This picture is probably too small, but trust me, it looked very fine.
London. As Doctor Johnson said, if you are tired of London, go to bed and get yourself a good night’s sleep and you will probably feel much better in the morning.
Blurring out the background is a rather important effect that photographers often try to control, although usually done by depth of field rather than motion blur (but using motion blur is also useful, especially in sports photography). This is one area that many users of compact digital cameras miss out on, since the depth of field of most of these cameras is very large.
You mention people looking at the LCD on the back of the camera. We call it “Chimping“. People will show their friends the image and they all point and “ooh. ooh, ooh!”
Dan
Many thanks for that. But can you tell me who “we” are, for these purposes?
I never did tire of London, but a good night’s sleep failed to relieve my weariness about the Northern Line.
Three hours a day getting to and from work (in the dark in winter) in an antique travelling prison in a tunnel filled with soot, toxic fumes and large rats, often with lengthy silent pauses along the way, perhaps enlivened by unpleasant ravings from the itinerant glaring at you from the opposite seat … life is too short. Cape Town has a train service that is almost as awful, except it isn’t underground. But it takes me half an hour to drive 40km on the motorway from my seaside hideaway to the centre of the city each day. I miss London, but not nearly enough to do it again.