After several screw-ups I managed to create a working orb tool in no small part thanks to the tutorial here.  I made one modification to that design in that I added in the ability to swap out different coloured lights from the base unit.  I’ll post some photos and a bit of a run down/tutorial on exactly what I did later this week.

Anyways, I hopped on the bus out to St. Paul’s on Saturday night and slowly wandered back home taking photos along the way.  My mate Sylvester turned up part way through and helped out with a couple of shots which I couldn’t have done without said assistance, so cheers mate!

As usual, there are a few more in the gallery.

Just a quick shot of my cat Oswald.  He’s often willing to forego comfort for his (not infrequent) naps if the location he’s selected is warm enough, as is the case here.  He’s wedged himself between two sets of windows for his own personal little greenhouse.

Despite the rain, several hardy POTN members (plus a few guests) made the trek to the Gherkin this past Saturday evening.  The initial plan was just to take a few well intentioned shots of the city; architectural photos of some interesting land marks or bizarre/unique designs.  I had brought some of my lighting gear with the intention of trying a few things out, but quickly learned I hadn’t planned well enough (for uninteresting reasons I won’t bore you with here).

Fortunately, Swaffs was on the ball and had a well working string of Christmas lights that were ideal for what I wanted to try out.  In fact, he had brought it along for the very same reason.  Orbing.

If you’re not familiar with these types of shots, there’s a fairly big assortment of them on Flickr.  There’s a group discussion of orbing here, and Rich was kind enough to make a video of me making one of the orbs here to demystify the process even further.

There’s one or two more orb images in the gallery, plus a few more non-orb images like these two of the Gherkin and Leadenhall Market.

As a first time visitor to the U.K., and indeed Europe in general, I felt a bit of responsibility to showcase some of the best aspects of the country to Melissa.  Possibly as part vindication of my chosen city of residence, but mostly just because I try to be a good host.

To that end, what could be more English than Afternoon Tea?  The venue was the classical Palm Court in the Langham Hotel, complete with a pianist for the majority of the afternoon.  What more could you want?

When we’d stuffed our faces with more sandwiches, desserts, scones and cupcakes than I care to remember (or will admit to my trainer), it was time for a leisurely walk.  Which didn’t last long it seemed like as good an evening as any to have a bit of a pub crawl on the way home.  Turns out, there are quite a few pubs between Oxford Circus and Tower Hill.  Not to say we visited them all, but enough to make the bus ride home a little blurry.

As usual, there are a few more images in the gallery.

I had a friend visiting this past week from the Homeland (Lethbridge in this case) so it was a busy 6 days of pretending to be a tour guide or tourist depending on my level of familarity with the given outing.  We covered museums, a musical, a bus tour & boat ride, lots of walking and a healthy sampling of London pubs in our time together.  Not to mention the excurisions she handled on her own.  Friday was her last full day here so I took the day off and we wandered through Regent’s Park to the London Zoo.

I had my camera handy for the latter, there’s a few shots here and the rest in the gallery.