The One With People Coming Out Of A Shadow Under A Bridge

Another street photography favourite, although the pros might have taken it more squarely. I like the way all the lines don't quite line up. And the red bit.

C'est Manifique, Mais C'est N'est Pas Singapore

Politicians talking about "Singapore on Thames" again. It looks plausible...

until you go inland, and realise that far more of Singapore looks like a tourist postcard than scruddy old East London will ever do.

 

Greenland Dock

 

The station for Greenland Dock is Surrey Quays, but they don't signpost it at the station in case, you know, the wrong kind of people go there. It was one of the first Docklands developments, as the low-rise and human scale (as the architects say) of the buildings shows. It was the first of the London docks to be built (as opposed to riverside wharves) (more details here) and it's pretty darn large. The Royals are larger, but some of the Isle of Dogs docks are smaller. On a sunny day, it's a pleasant place to walk around, with houseboats...

and little feature places as well.

When you get to the Thames, turn right and start walking along the Thames Path towards London Bridge. It's a nice stroll.

Charlton House

 Most of it is open to the public, but sadly there's no historic furniture, art or decoration there. It's a ten-minute walk up the hill from Charlton station, and worth an amble around the park, a cup of coffee and slice of Victoria cake in the cafe. 

Bleak Mid-Winter Suburbia

It's not enough to get out for a daily walk. The walk needs to be pleasant, or at least neutral, to look at. Hedges on country lanes, with an occasional glimpse across a valley, or perhaps a path across a flat moor, or maybe even along a canal. Not round the outside of an industrial estate. But we make do and carry on.

 

One Wall of the Walled Garden, Golders Hill Park

 

Golders Hill Park is a couple of stops up the hill from the station. It's well worth the visit.

Mid-Morning November Fog in Richmond Park

This new lens is working out really well, as is the change of film simulation. But nothing beats some fog to smooth out the light and make mundane views look magical.

Highgate Road with Lens Flare

When the light is bright and the air is clear, almost anything is photogenic. 

Well, maybe not the entrance to Archway station. Some things can't be made to look pretty.

I took this in the approved style, by holding the camera at arm's length with one hand, framing in the viewer. Came out nice.

Hampstead Heath North Side

Until the other day I had never walked on the part of Hampstead Heath that is across Spaniards Lane from the main part of the Heath. Neither are really '"heaths", more like "untended forests" with paths that can turn I've-just-got-a-load-of-mud-on-my-shoes within a couple of steps. The sky was brilliant blue, the sun was brilliant yellow, and it was b****y cold.

I have joined the band of proper grown-up camera-owners, by trading in the 35mm lens I originally bought for the hard-to-obtain 27mm pancake lens that makes the X-E4 almost a pocket camera. It's 40mm-equivalent, which gives just a slightly wider field of view than the 35mm (53mm equivalent) but does not go all fish-eye.

Cuba Street, Isle of Dogs

Cuba Street is a narrow road that runs from the old West India Pier into the Isle of Dogs. This is that view.

It did not look like that when I was using the RiverBus to get there more than thirty years ago. It was all pretty derelict. The cream building on the corner was there then, but it was an old-school pub and I think scruffier. Go to the river end of Cuba Street, and look up what is known in the trade as the Limehouse Reach, and that view has not changed for almost forty years. Which is probably why I find it so restful(!). 

Autumn in Regent's Park

No further comment needed.

Canary Wharf - Security

I think the area within the North and South Colonnades, which has the the Underground station in the middle, is patrolled by security officers and may well be owned by the Canary Wharf people, and therefore private land. I was approached by a friendly security officer, who explained that their concern was people taking photographs of entrances to buildings, security camera locations and the like. We parted with a handshake and I carried on.

He meant an entrance like this...

Outside that are I didn't see any security at all. I suspect the use of a tripod within that area requires permission from the Estate management.

Canary Wharf Towers

I went to Canary Wharf the other week. The first developer in there was a Canadian firm called Olympia and York. In Canada, it's so darn cold and the snow is so darn deep that the shopping centres of many larger towns are actually built underground. Not all of them, but certainly Toronto, where O&Y came from. The O&Y buildings have their shops below ground, and may other developers have followed this lead of doing nothing at street level. 

Another way of saying this is that there is no "street" at street level in Canary Wharf. "Street" should mean shops, cafes, restaurants, cars, taxis, buses, signs, lights, fly-posted adverts, and so on. At ground level. Flats, offices and light industrial ateliers from the first floor up. There are a few coffee and food trucks and some buses, but that's about it. 

The City of London is an industrial estate, but it has a variety of architectural styles and various eateries and drinkeries at street level - while Cheapside and Princes Street / Moorgate have actual recognisable retail outlets. But Canary Wharf is just a collection of high towers with some "architectural" gimmicks that only ever looked decorative in the architect's sketches. Metal-and-glass is metal-and-glass no matter how you angle it - it does not have the texture of stone or brick.

Worst Photo Ever

It's a big claim, but I think this one is a pretty good contender. 

It's boring to look at - oh look! a bush! and water! - it's has far too much shadow and is black in places it should not be dark in. The sky isn't quite blown out, but neither is quite convincing. How much did the X-E4 and lens cost? Getting value for money then.

I should have taken the shot with my iPhone, which would have given me this.

 

It's not from the phone, but it is as close as I can get with Photos to that eerie iPhone sky and foreground clarity. Shadows is maxed out and Brilliance tweaked down a touch. It's a much better-looking shot, and probably bears a strong resemblance to what I actually saw, which was something like this...

The sky is slightly fuzzy, but that is what midday glare does to our eyes. The shadows under the bush are more realistic, but overdone in the trees in the background.

I would never have taken that photo with the OM10 and Kodak ISO 200, or if I had, I would have focused on the bush and water, and tried to keep the sky out of the frame. Keeping the dynamic range low was something else we did by instinct back in the day even though we didn't know it was called that.

But with a super-clever digital camera, for some reason, I expect to be able to point the lens at whatever mess is in front of it and have the camera sort it out. Wrong. The old rules still apply. When shooting JPEG. (1)

And if I do follow the old-school rules, any big-brand camera will produce a really nice JPEG.

My candidate for Worst Photo Ever is not such a one. Not only is it technically poor, and shot with no care at all, it's not very interesting to look at. Green, right?

There's a reason why hip street photographers don't take photographs of what's left of Epping Forest - in this case a little corner of Highams Park Lake. Trees have lots of shadows created by the leaves. All those leaves are the same colour, but some reflect the light and others bounce it around, depending on where the sun is. Trees do not have neat geometrical shapes, and make a poor background for someone in a red coat striding purposefully from the shadows on the left to the light on the right. As opposed to a staircase in the Barbican, say. Or a street scene with a nice even light and some not-too-deep shadows.

Anyway, the weather looks highly un-photogenic for the next few weeks, so I won't be taking the X-E4 anywhere soon. And I will not be taking another photograph of anything green or plant-like when I do.



(1) Why? Digital cameras can create RAW files and JPEGs. RAW files are a copy of the data from the sensor, and need to be processed to be at all pleasing, so processing the messy bits out is all one with processing the nice bits in. RAW requires a monthly subscription to Lightroom or Capture One, and either putting in a heap of time developing one's own presets to turn the dull RAW file into something worth looking at, or putting in a heap of time experimenting with other people's presets. 

JPEGs are the camera's attempt at doing all that processing for the user, using the photo-relevant camera settings and algorithms the camera engineers have devised. Here's the thing: Apple has way more engineers working on that sensor data-to-JPEG / HEIC conversion than Fuji, Sony, Panasonic, or any other mere camera maker will ever be able to afford, and the iPhone has a chip way more capable than a camera chip will ever be, so the resulting computational photography will produce far superior conversions of RAW-to-JPEG / HEIC than the camera makers ever will. (Given a reasonable amount of taste on behalf of the engineers and product manager.) The camera companies are still comparing their gear to top-end film cameras, and may be missing the part where we-the-customer will be comparing it with what the top-end phones do.

The Looming Walkie-Talkie, Fenchurch Street

 

It looks like some weird Photoshopping, but it is what the camera sees. It looks just like that.

30 Fenchurch Street

 

Does what it says on the tin.

60 Great Tower Street

They were the only two who came into the office that Friday.

 

The One With Reflections In The Window

 

I like a good reflection shot. The original has some awkward perspective issues, so I dug out DxO Perspective and corrected it. 

The One With The Girl Standing In A Doorway

 

Yet another staple of street photography. Nice scarf.

10 Photography Thoughts

It's well past time Councils all over the country had to prune back the trees and cut back the undergrowth - un-tended growth is ruining the photgenicity. 

Take the shot at right angles or straight on. Taking the shot at an angle, especially upwards, introduces awkward perspectives, unless that's the effect you want

Don't try to frame it in the camera. Take a wider shot and crop. With all those megapixels, there will be plenty left to give a decent image.

Make a silk purse out of a sow's ear with brutal cropping.

Sometimes a place has (say) seventeen good photographs in it, and when you've go them, you're done with it.

There's something wrong with my eyesight, because every shot I take is off-vertical. Every. Single. One. 

 
You can never have enough sky, but you can have too much foreground - late nineteenth-century wide-angle plate shots of empty Parisian streets and squares aside.

I am never talking a photograph of plants or flowers again. Ever.

Sometimes you can't get what you want in the shot - just try taking a good photograph of the Reaper drone at the RAF Museum, Hendon. With an X-E4 and a 35mm lens. I tried - wouldn't work.

Photos has a Hide Photograph option - use it if you can't bring yourself to delete something truly average.

BONUS: You can never have too much bright sunny blue.