GotPassion?

Waiting for Coffee.

It is as though this table is just waiting for a couple to sit down and soak in the atmosphere of London over a cup of coffee...

 

And When The Sun Shines

The best thing about rain is that it makes the sun so much more exciting. I always enjoy the sun much more after a time of bad weather. When you have had weeks of a dull white blanket over your days, the day the sun comes out is so special - you can crank up Mr Blue Sky on the ipod and feel the words.

The rain has so many uses, but here in England, I don't think it is appreciated enough, we complain so much about 'all our rain'. However it is in times like these, during a drought that we learn to appreciate it, what it does for us.

My favourite moments are when you see the sun first peep out from the clouds.

 

And when I look at these photos I think of this great quote by Sam in my beloved Lord of the Rings.

"I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come.

And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something."

Parkland Walk

Parkland Walk is a lovely green oasis in North London of which I am really growing to really love. It runs along a disused railway and is a little surreal/ghostly especially at the abandoned platforms, where you can just imagine the trains that used to go along the path. The whole thing reminds me a little of the film Fried Green Tomatoes which features ghost towns and ghost railways (if you haven't seen it, you should!)

There are two sections on Parkland Walk, one that goes from Finsbury Park to Highgate and then another at Muswell Hill. I can't remember the exact location for getting on and off there, but I know my Dad knows, so Dad, please tell me in the comments section!

So after little DanDan's birthday party, I met up with my folks who were in Muswell Hill. After the obligatory confusing conversation about what to do and the best way to do it we decided on Parkland Walk (the Finsbury Park section). Which got even more confusing as then we got in a 'discussion' with Dad about the best way to reach it. Turns out he knew the way to the second section (so we were both right!)

So armed with a packet of Polo's, on we walked...

Polos.

I'd like to mention here that my parents never go anywhere without polos. They bulk buy them. Such is my Dad's love of Polos, that one birthday he received about 50 packets of them from his various children. So if you are ever walking along and in need of refreshment, and you see one of them, ask for a polo. According to them, a polo is an appropriate alternative to water or food.

I am starting to believe the same thing.

Best of 2009

Apparently I have taken 6000 or so images this year. But I know this is not true, I think the figure maybe over 30000, I just deleted alot of them. Such are the joys of digital cameras!

So with 6000 of all sorts of occasions, it was pretty hard to choose my favourite. Really hard. But persist I did, and these are some of my favourites (by no means all off) and include personal photos, taken for my own joy and photos for other people).

 

- My first wedding ever, I got to work alongside another photographer and had an absolute ball of the day, loved every minute

  

- Went to Guadeloupe in the West Indies and see my family I hadn't seen in so long, and took 2000 photos, no kidding. It is impossible to pick a favourite out of that lot, so I picked this one of my niece and goddaughter and obliging model of 5 years who celebrated her birthday when I was there.

 

- Maybe it does rain alot in the UK, but storms like this make for good photos. This photo was taken the week of Wimbledon tennis, who thankfully for them had a new roof fitted so it didn't have to stop matches for the rain.

 

- I got so many photos of Berry this year, of which this is my favourite, sadly Berry died in November and whilst he is much missed it is a comfort to have so many photos of happy memories with him.

 

Wedding No. 3 that I shot, was some great friends of ours. It was such a pleasure to attend their special day and a complete honour to photograph it.

 

The summer brought with it my family home via Paris, where I took a long weekend to go and meet them. One thing I wanted to do whilst I was there was to go up the Eiffel Tower, apparently everyone else did as well and when we got there, there were long long queues and we only had limited time before going to catch the train back to England. So I got a bunch of shots from the ground, this being my favourite - I actually love the backlighting from the sun. Next time I shall get to the top though!

 

- My friend Naomi gave birth to her beautiful baby girl 4 days after this photo was taken, believe it or not. We got this one last walk in the woods in and had a lovely time.

- Living in London, I have so many photos, and often of the same thing. It it always good to get a new perspective. In the autumn I started helping with the local guides and rainbows and we had a leaders narrow boating trip one weekend. I got out one morning off the boat to get this photo of the docks and discovered a new area of London.

 

- Prince Michael of Kent came to visit our church and the local estate, great day and I was thrilled to be the photographer for the church. 

 

- So nice to have my family home in England now and although they are in a different borough they are still close enough to go and hang out with them.
 

 

- Family portrait sessions are my favourite and it is especially a pleasure to do portraits for friends.

 

Naomi and baby A. 

 

Baby A's friend Baby Boy L. Absolute cutie with beautiful mama, what more can you want for a baby session?

Sheerness

It was a Wednesday in the middle of the Summer holidays. The weather was hot and sunny and expected to be well into the 30's and everyone, but everyone decided to beach was the place to be. 

Including us. Our intention was to revisit Whitstable, a lovely little beach we had spent the previous year. On the road with the sun blaring down, the messages came about an accident ahead and closed roads. We had to rethink our journey. The relatives in the car behind made the most of the jams by popping out of the car to pick blackberries from the side of the road.

We decided to detour to Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey, just of the coast of Kent. Sheerness is itself a lovely beach. Much bigger than the Whitstable, with a fish bar (that took a while to find). 

HIs uncle got this windmill toy that provided on the day and ever since, hours of entertainment!

The girls thought the sea was far too cold and ran away from it, they are too used to the warm caribbean waters!

My zoom lense helped me get this shot across the sea looking over at Southend

Look closely at the bottom left hand corner, yes you really do see a pet lizard being taken for a walk on the beach!

And the journey home...

A Day Out for the Family

When my sister and family came home, they were joined by her husband's family from France and as it fell during my summer holidays I got to join them on some days out. 

On this one we took the Tube to Trafalgar Square, walked along to Big Ben and got the boat down to the Thames Barrier. I have never even seen the Thames Barrier before, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable journey. The boat passes all the normal landmarks on the way down to Greenwich including the London Eye, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Hays Galleria and Canary Wharf to name but a few. Quite a few people get off at Greenwich, where the river also starts to get a lot wider, both meaning the journey from Greenwich to Thames Barrier feels a lot more peaceful. This part of the journey also passes the Millenium Done (the 02 Arena). 

Olympic Building

With 1046 days to go until the Olympics in 2012, it is with nervous anticipation we watch the preparations. Especially in terms of the building work... There is a particular train line that goes from pretty near our house right past the main area of building. And its always been interesting to see how things are progressing, watching the stadium and other Olympic buildings rise up out of the (mostly) waste ground that once existed there. (Was it really a waste ground? I am not sure, but it is certainly how I remember it used to look from the train anyway.)

The line I am talking about would be the Richmond - Stratford Overground Line. It is the little gateway to East London, that I take to get to Essex (for when is strictly necessary), the Scrapbooking shop Artbase and now my sister's new house. So on a visit to my sister for the 1st time last week, I secretly whipped out my camera for these few shots. 

Secrecy is a necessity. The overground line attracts all kinds on interesting people, indeed on the last journey the ambulance were called for a passenger who was incapacitate with either drunkenness or something having a similar effect. 

But seeing the results I was pleased to have taken the risk, please note the rather interesting window patterns, I gave up trying to avoid them and decided to embrace the circular rainbows...

For more photos from this journey, click on the photo to follow the link!

Rain and Rainbows, London, July 2009

If you live under the delusion that it rains all the time in London, it really doesn't. At least I don't think it does, and I know this from spending alot of time outdoors throughout the week. All though this week has been a mix of rain and sun and a lot of the rain seems to come at the most noticeable times, rush hour! 

The nice thing about this weeks weather is whilst there has been lot of rain - it has been very mixed. The wind pushing it on and bringing in new rain showers. I am fond of the kind of rain where we can see the edge of the clouds - great for photos (absolutly don't like the oppressive cloud cover kind that has no end in site for days on end). Also I like rainbows and these are from Friday evening...

The area in this pic below where the rainbow fades is caused I think by rain...

Mamma Mia! The Musical: Review

 

So last night was the big night for me and Dad to go along to Mamma Mia as his birthday present to me, and what a great night it was too.

As I am sure I have mentioned before I always appreciate that living in London, we can do these things fairly easily and not travel. In fact I would go as far as saying it outweighs most of the disadvantages of living in London.

Me and Dad are big Mamma Mia fans after Mum got it for Christmas (I think) and it has received many showings in parts and in its entirety in our house. 

Apparently the musical came before the film and thus is the original version. The pre show entertainment was a woman who didn't like her seat at the end of the row trying to get another seat, unsuccessful as the show was sold out.

Can I suggest if you are going to the theatre and care passionately about your seat, visit this website: London Theatre Seat Plans which shows you where all the seats are in the theatre, sort of like Seat Guru but for theatres. And if you have a really cheap last minute ticket, then suck it up and deal with it otherwise you will embarrass yourselves in front of the likes of me as you argue with the various theatre staff. So you have been warned!

We went on a wednesday night and whilst it was a novelty for the theatre in the middle of the week, it meant it was harder for me to get out of my work mind and in to enjoying mode, as it seemed to be for many others and the audience took a few songs to warm up and respond.

The music was just fantastic and whilst I didn't think the singing was the most outstanding I had ever heard I thought the dancing and choreography was out of this world, quite literally at times. There were a few songs that aren't included in Mamma Mia: The Film. My favourite being
'Under Attack' with Sophie having nightmares of being attacked by swimmers and divers in pschadelic swimming cozzies. Here is a youtube of the original (also apparently the last performance ever given by Abba as a group'.

It is also worth noting that we went in the first week of the British school holidays and there were a lot of children there in the audience including a lot of young girls dressed to the nines. And whilst it is mostly a family show there are a few sexual innuendoes, comments and actions (more so than the film) which I don't know I'd be happy to have my younger child see. Maybe it will pass them by if you have a not very observant child but as I have noticed in my years of working with children, they notice things. They notice a lot of things. I have had 3 and 4 year old kids make comments to me about things I did or said a week before and had forgotten about. I think 7 year olds would notice what is going on even if they don't say anything. 

The story is presented beautifully, dancing is amazing, and the set consists of two walls which are moved in different positions and together with the are just incredible at setting the different scenes. One of my favourite scenes is my least fave in the film and that is the hen night (I find it in the film just too stressful) but in the musical they just use the the lights and sound to create that whole scene perfectly.

I also want to pay tribute to the seemingly infinite energy levels of the cast, not only singing and dancing but it was also the cast members who did the set changes, bringing on tables and beds etc, and one did a little jump and a clap at the same time. Quite impressive!

If you don't have an aversion to strobe lights, abba music, white lycra or platforms I would completely and utterly recommend you go see this musical, topped off with a little singalong at the end!

Fox Gloves, Forty Hall, London 2009

As I try and deal with several big projects of processing photos including the ones from a wedding yesterday (where the bride wore the most beautiful dress - ever!) it is little ones like these that give me a relaxing diversion.

Happily today I have achieved the following things...

8 hours with the lovely lovely children and survived the hot weather

Bought bananas (you would think that we have to do it every week would make it a habit it isn't, every week it is like a surprise, 'oh, we need bananas, again?!' Maybe one day....

Formatted a hard drive and turned it in to a backup for the computer (and praying hard I didn't lose any important stuff when I formatted!) Presently it is half way through the back up and it has taken about an hour I think. Only another hour to go. Sigh!

Processing wedding photos, weeding out the rubbish ones. Still doing it, but I am more than half way through that, then will come editing stage. 

Managed not to go completely crazy trying to figure out why my other external hard drive has only 12 gb free space when I calculated it has 120 gbs used on it (250 gb drive) can anyone advise??? Please!

Ah well back to the deleting