It wasn’t intentional, but we happened to be in and around the Westminster area on Remembrance Day weekend this year.  The plan was just to do some standard sight seeing and get a few photos of Baba at the parliament buildings (which we did), but it’s always interesting and humbling to see the displays set out to mark the occasion.

The lawns of Westminster Abby are completely transformed for the weekend.  All along the walkways are thousands and thousands of tiny memorial crosses, divided up into the military units they represent, covered in notes, photos, mementos and words of thanks.  I’m not certain if the crosses are supposed to represent a one-to-one relationship with the soldiers who’ve died in one of the many wars starting with WWI, but I do know there are an awful lot of crosses and it certainly makes you stop and think.

Moving on from the Abbey we crossed the road and took a few photos of the lovely fall colours in Victoria Tower Gardens next to parliament before crossing the river at Lambeth Bridge.

It’s a nice day out and a good walk, especially this end of Westminster as it avoids most of the major touristy areas once you’re away from parliament and the abbey.  We stopped for a bit of lunch at a cute riverside restaurant on the south bank of the Thames before gathering our things and heading back home.

There are a few more images in the gallery as always!

I think I’m going to have to create an album just for shots of London, as my new project has me out quite often shooting scenes within the city. This past Saturday had me out with Lord Crawley again shooting the oft-photographed south bank including Westminster, the eye and even the Banksy Tunnel.

I’ve shot the tunnel in the past, but this time I dragged along some lighting kit to do a portrait shot or two.  Lee was kind enough to be my model for the evening, which made things much easier!

We also managed to spin a couple of orbs on the south bank, much to the surprise of the passersby out for a quiet stroll.  At one point I was worried about collecting tips as a street performer while I stood on a raised dais whirling my LED’s around.  Still, I think it was worth it and I wouldn’t have said no to a few quids worth of coins.

Sunday was spent with my friend Su Kim doing some portrait head shots for her London relocations website.  It was fun to do something in a psudo-professional capacity and getting a free, yummy lunch out of the deal just made my day!  We’re still in the selection process, but there should be one or two processed photos online shortly.  If not here than at the very least on my 365 site as I didn’t take any other photos that day.

A few more shots from the weekend are available in the gallery.

Depending on how you look at it, London has been blessed or cursed with a fair bit of snow over the past few days.  For me, I love it!  It’s just hovering around freezing which means it’s not too cold to be out for a stroll or to shoot a few shots.  If you happen to have any desire to travel to or from London itself by any of the available means then it’s more akin to an extended Freddy Krueger style nightmare with very little chance of escape.

The Canadian in me can’t help but chuckle a little bit at these catastrophic weather events that bring tens of millimeters of snow and drag the city to it’s knees.  Back home we call this sort of weather June.

Not one to be an ungrateful foreigner who moans about the country I feel I have to say I really do love living here.  But honestly, every year the snow falls and every year the government & transportation services look up into the sky and claim that Armageddon is at last upon us.  Everything shuts down for days while some department does a feasibility study on whether or not the country should invest in the infrastructure that would be able to handle such a mild dusting of snow.

The answer comes days after the snow is gone and is inevitably No, which sets us up perfectly to do it all again when the next blizzard arrives.

Anyway, the whole reason I was out on Saturday night (after consuming festive beverages the four nights prior) was to celebrate a friends birthday and enjoy some of the pre-Christmas spirit.  As a result, I felt at the time that my photos were a lot better than they actually were, hence all of the heavy processing to salvage a few of the shots.

There are a couple more in the gallery as per usual.

I went out with Lee again for a bit of a wander around the city.  No real purpose in mind apart from a bit of street shooting (that neither of us are that comfortable with) and to just get out as I hadn’t pulled my camera out of it’s bag since the Ukraine.

There are a few more shots in the gallery.

I went out with a few folks from the POTN crowd I usually shoot with and we joined up with a rather large (25ish) group of photographers who are all part of a London based photography group on Facebook.

The plan was to travel along the southbank (again!) to see the exhibits from the DRIFT 08 show.  As you can imagine, with that many people the plans sort of fell apart fairly quickly.  And to be honest, the displays where less than stellar and didn’t do much to spark my imagination (which I was really hoping for).

Anyways, a couple quick photos here and the rest are in the gallery.