Leica there be light...and crowds!

I'd been keen to check out Lumiere, as the images have been well splashed on social media, however, I have an abhorrence to crowds. But bravely after today's Meetup five of us, with some trepidation, thought we'd check out what was happening at King's Cross. And apparently, most of London seemed to have the very same idea.

En route I tried to capture the children light painting by holding my camera above my head, but it was very far from ideal.

We had to make do with cage structure that normally lives outside King's Cross colour changing with the seething mass of visitors surrounding it.

We couldn't get anywhere near Granary Square proper, which apparently would have yielded intriguing floor level lights (excellent for a large crowd to view, not!) I saw the edge of one of the walls but the surging spectators whisked you past it all.

We gave up and headed back to the station, and then had to suffer a drawn-out evacuation due to dangerous overcrowding. I heard later that lights we'd been attempting to view were switched off too, in an effort to facilitate crowd dispersal. So that would have been a major disappointment.

In a moment of madness, I said goodbye to everyone else when the station reopened and thought I'd venture to Oxford Circus for the flying from should thing. And I was glad I did, I thought it was beautiful, and rather awe-inspiring. Having the exhibit in the sky helped everyone who wanted to photograph it plenty of opportunity to do such that. The ones who wanted to look up and stare or photograph were led to the middle of the closed road, and those who just wanted to get elsewhere, were confined to the pavement.

I think it worked well. I would have liked to explore more exhibits but the horrible crowds at King's Cross had put me off venturing further, so I quit whilst I was ahead. Maybe next year...

 

Posted with Blogsy