With whole weekends off lately, Danni and I have been venturing out (weather permitting) to explore bits of London near my new flat.  This weekend we hoped on a bus to Kew Gardens to stretch our legs and get a psudo-countryside experience in the heart of London.

Obviously the camera came along for our trip out, but I tried not to take too many typical flower shots as my photo a day project seems to be filling up with them.

The weather wasn’t ideal and it started to rain by the end of the day, but we managed to see a large portion of the gardens.  I can’t go there without visiting the Japanese corner with their traditional gardening style and the massive pagoda.

Summer is fast approaching, but there were still an awful lot of ‘spring chicks’ around.  I got to hang out with a few of my fellow Canadians who were also enjoying the park.

The day ended with a healthy meal and a pint of delicious Kew Gold at a local pub while we waited out the rain, which never did end.

There are a couple more photos in the gallery as is the tradition around here.

My new friend and fellow photo enthusiast Ted Chan invited me along to a party he was shooting as part of his bid to take over the world efforts to expand his photographic knowledge.  As I hadn’t known Ted for very long and as we’d only ever spoken about shooting when we did see each other, I made the rather embarrassing mistake of assuming Ted was inviting me along to help him shoot the event.

This was not the case.

Fortunately, he was a really good sport about it all and cleared things with the promoter so that I was allowed to help cover the event (given that I’d brought along the heavy camera gear anyway, I was thankful).

The event itself was put on by a promotions company, who from what I gather have done quite a few of these events in the past and they’ve always been very successful.  This one was sold out when I checked the website almost a month before it was to be put on.

Obviously, I’ve gone with a very different processing style for these images.  I processed them all normally, but I just didn’t think it really fit.  Something a bit more vintage was in order.  It may be a little over done on the grain, but I was happy with the results overall.

The costumes there were amazing and everyone was really keen to get their photos done.  I even had quite a few people grab me as I walked past asking to have their photos done.  Which was ideal given my usual crippling shyness in asking people if it’s ok for me to take their photos…

There are a few more vintage images in the gallery here, and the images are duplicated here without the extreme processing.