Not so secret sky garden

 

 

Today's London Street Photography Meetup, and the last of 2016 was back to one of my favourite themes, Man vs Architecture. And I was finally going to visit the Sky Garden in the Walkie-Talkie building. That isn't really its name, I think it's just called 20 Fenchurch Street (I know, catchy!) I visited it frequently in its previous incarnation, when it was much less shiny. But that was work (even though lovely people worked there) and this is pure photographic pleasure.

 

 

 

 

Whilst we were up there, we were tasked to work with glass, which, luckily, there was plenty of. Sadly the view was a tad obscured by mist and framed by such a bland sky by it was fun trying to capture some interesting silhouettes.

 

 

 

 

When we were down on terra firma again, our challenge was to illustrate scale, little people, tall buildings, obviously that gave us plenty of opportunity to comment on the vertically challenged amongst us! I added a ginormous Gherkin, a giant head and a towering walkie-talkie into the mix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Winter Wonderland and 'elfies

 

 

 

Today, the London Street Photography Meetup photogs descended en masse upon Hyde Park and all that is the 10th year of Winter Wonderland. Our challenge was (and it certainly was) to create a set of three photos working with the twinkling and sparkly nights. We could look for silhouettes against the colourful amusement rides/stalls, or abstracts using ICM and purposely off-focus, or the faces of some of the visitors (not necessarily the smaller ones) illuminated by the vibrant neon. The main challenge was trying to make any sense of the crazy cacophony of the crowds and kaleidoscope of chaotic colour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those who hadn't begun to suffer from frostbite congregated in the large marquee that made up the Bavarian Village and feasted on bratwurst and Geri’s chocolate balls washed down with lashings of mulled wine.

And then with the aid of an elf Darren won on some shooting (the other kind) skills thingy, we decided to take a whole bunch of ‘elfies, and in some cases, thoroughly abuse the poor elf!

 

 

 

As we were leaving, I won a small, fat penguin with a net and gave him a little tube adventure on the journey home.

 

 

I'm not sure I have a set as such but rather a random collection of all the themes, hmmm, which three?

 

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Through the eyes of an alien child

 

 

Saturday's London Street Photography Meetup was "Urban Abstracts", also known as "Through the eyes of an alien child"! We had four close-up elements to capture - 1) letters, numbers or symbols, 2) colours 3) curves (not 'women curves') and lastly lines (up and down-y lines, side to side-y etc).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our playground was Smithfield Market, post meat trading, though still a tad gamey in the air. One of the brethren of our most enduring group of supporters, a security guard, informed us there was to be no photography, we smiled, nodded and pretty much ignored him!

 

 

 

 

 

This was a new theme and I really enjoyed losing myself in the abstracts, the minutiae and the little details and not having to contend with those pesky human types.

 

 

 

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