February already and I haven’t made any posts or taken any photos in 2014. I hadn’t made any resolutions to take more photos this year or anything, but I kind of hoped that I’d have some more motivations but that hasn’t really happened yet. Oh well.

At any rate, Danni and I went into London for the Chinese New Year celebrations and to watch the parade that they haven’t held in a number of years.

China Town looked brilliant as always, but the parade was really, really short.  Both in the route it travelled and the length of the actual parade.  We waited on the road side for the better part of an hour only to have the whole thing be over in about 10 minutes.

Still, I’m always happy to get to see the dragon and lion performers out on the streets.  I love that kind of thing, and they always do a brilliant job for Chinese New Year’s in London.

We struggled through Trafalgar Square which was ridiculously packed.  I’m probably getting old, but I honestly can’t see how anyone can have fun crushed in with tens of thousands of other people in such a small space.  Maybe they were trying to recreate an authentic Chinese experience?  At any rate, my cranky, inner old man wasn’t enjoying this part of the day, but I did get a shot of my lovely wife with the dragon as they were moving it into the Square.

My faithful lens had given up the ghost on this day and the autofocus was broken.  It’s fixed now (after an ugly repair bill), but it did mean that I got an awful lot less images than I was hoping to.  Still, there are a few more in the gallery here.

Danni and I have been wanting to do a bit of a photo shoot in a nearby park with Danni in her ballet shoes.  We took a short bus ride (actually 2 bus rides as I realized after the first trip that my camera battery was dead) to Beddington Park to take advantage of some of the lovely scenery.

One of my favourite shots of the day.  It wasn’t a particularly complex setup, just a single flash with a shoot-through umbrella to Danni’s left.  It doesn’t take much to make her look good!

We did a couple of natural light images that turned out quite nicely as well.

It always amazes me that someone can look so graceful while balancing themselves on their tip-toes, but I think she certainly managed it here.  There are some more photos in the gallery as usual.

So a couple of years ago I wandered around London with a few friends on an all night photo shoot.  A small group (read: 3) of us decided to go again this year and work our way in reverse of the 2011 route, starting at Buckingham Palace.

I spent way too much time trying to force an image that wasn’t happening here and ended up with a whole bunch of similar shots that were all varying degrees of rubbish.  Even the ‘group photo’, which I normally really enjoy taking turned out bland and poorly lit.

From there, we headed down the Strand stopping at the Royal Courts for a few images.  I don’t know why, but it seemed like the only thing I could think of to shoot was blurry traffic.  I have about 30 images that all look basically like this:

And if that wasn’t enough, we moved on to St. Paul’s and I took even more.  To be fair, I quite like this one so I suppose it wasn’t a total waste of my time.

We popped up to the roof terrace at One New Change to get a few shots of the city but it was already too dark (black/orange skies) and security came round to tell us it was closed and we had to leave.  However, if you haven’t been up there it’s highly recommended as a nice view of St. Paul’s and the city.  Just find the lifts in the middle of the shopping center and head up to the 6th floor.  It’s open to the public so you don’t need to feel like you’re trespassing.  We were told that it closes at midnight during the summer, not sure about winter time.

I’m not sure why, but we then headed off to the Gherkin and Leadenhall Market.  I think it was because Neal’s friend hadn’t shot there before.  I feel like I’ve had my fill of the area and it’s difficult to shoot in the dead of night, so I just wasted some time while they were doing their shots.

We wandered around aimlessly and through some rather dodgy parts of East London before the sky started to lighten up and we made our way to Tower Bridge.  I can never tire of photographing that landmark, but I was feeling really off that night and couldn’t take a decent photo to save my life.

I think the fact that I haven’t done much in the way of photography over the past 6-8 months is really starting to show, both in my creativity and technical know-how.  I’ve just spent the past 20 minutes comparing this years photos to those of 2 years ago, and I have to say the ones from 2011 are much higher quality and that makes me a little bit depressed.

I’m hoping that now that our house renovations are complete (Yay!) I’ll have some free time on the weekends to enjoy the last stretch of summer and get out there for a few photo shoots.

There are a few more images in the gallery.

So last weekend I was just about to take some trash out to the bins when I noticed this little fellow sitting on our front lawn about 10 feet from the door.

He was quite comfy on our grass so while Danni was taking a few photos of him I ran up to get my camera. When I came back down he’d moved to within about 5 feet of our open door and just settled down for his photo shoot.

It was quite unusual to see a fox during the day, and also one who moved closer to you instead of running away.  I think he was quite a young fox, and when he finally did get up to wander off he was limping a bit so I’m wondering if that had something to do with it.  We just sat inside our door and enjoyed his company for a bit before he wandered off to do some important fox things.

This has sort of become a tradition of sorts around our place.  Come to visit and we’re very likely going to Richmond Park.  I think we both just really love it there but need some sort of excuse to make the trip out.  Especially now as it’s a couple of bus rides away.

We had much more success finding the deer than we did at our last family outing.  The winter weather had killed off most of the shoulder-height ferns so there wasn’t anywhere for the deer to hide.  Well, apart from being somewhere in the vastness that is Richmond Park.  Fortunately we didn’t have to wait too long to find them, we just needed to be willing to get our shoes a bit muddy.  It has definitely rained this year!

I’ve been enough times now that I can act as a bit of a mini tour-guide, provided I can keep to the general middle area of the park.  We did a wide loop around the ponds and through as many of the treed in areas as we could.  I enjoy the wide open spaces as much as the next prairie raised lad, but the bitter winds had us seeking as much shelter as possible in order to prolong our hike.

All in all a very successful deer spotting sojourn.  I think mom was quite happy with the wildlife, which is saying something for someone who grew up in Vancouver with the Rocky Mountains on her doorstep.  There are a few more images in the gallery, but they’re mostly family images.  If you’re after more deer photos, I was at the park with gusto earlier in the year to get my fill of deer shots.