While I may not be a big fan of my new flat, the gated community that it’s in has some really well kept gardens.

Over the past couple of weeks the grounds have more or less erupted with a huge variety of flowers, so Danni and I wandered around over the weekend taking a few photos.

I’m certain my mom would know the names of everything around, but we were just happy with the sights and smells of our colourful new neighbours.

It was such a nice day that we even took Pepsi down to the park and let him have a wander.  He hasn’t been properly outside since his BVI days, so it was quite an event!

It was nice to take a few photos not purely for my 365 project as well.  It’s been difficult to fit in time to do a full set when I’ve been so concentrated on producing a single image every day.

There are more photos in the gallery if you haven’t had your fill of spring flowers yet.

There are very few landmarks in London that I don’t already have a proverbial ‘butt load’ of photos of, but the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey definitely fall into that category.  To be fair, I have quite a few shots of the HoP but most of them are from across the river in your standard tourist visiting the Thames style.  I wanted something different.

I met up with Dennis shortly after work and we wasted no time setting up and peppering Big Ben’s clock tower with shots.  Generally, shooting things with a tilt-shift lens gives me a unique twist on some oft-photographed subjects, but it’s not always a guarantee.  That being said, I was pretty happy with the set of photos I ended up with.

From there it was on to the Abbey for a few more shots while the rest of the days light faded.  This church will be the location for the upcoming royal wedding in April, so it was a fairly topical spot to shoot.  I’m certainly not going to try to come down here and get a few photos on the day, as organizers are expecting several hundred thousand people to turn up and try to catch a glimpse.  I suspect I’ll stay home and watch it on TV…

Before calling it a night and heading to the nearest pub, we wandered past the south end of Westminster Palace for a few more shots of the building as well as the required portrait shots.

Check out my sweet camera (and note the camera envy on my face)

There are a few more photos of our excursion here.

So I got a text from Neal this past Wednesday asking if I was up for heading back down to the Banksy Tunnel for a car/promo shoot with some friends of his.  The plan as I understood it was to photograph a couple of cars along with a few models and just have a bit of fun with it.

Given I’m less than 2 months into my 365 project and already running out of ideas I jumped at the chance.  It’s been a while since I’ve worked with models and I’ve never shot cars properly before so it sounds like a fun evening.

While I won’t say it wasn’t fun, it was quite a bit more work than I’d anticipated.  I was expecting 1 or 2 models and 2 or 3 cars, but we ended up with 5 girls and 10-12 cars of which we probably only 6 or 7.  Neal and I managed an almost assembly line style production of taking around 20 shots of each car with and without the girls, but there was little time to get the lighting down.  I used some ‘safe’ settings and we fired away but looking back I’m wishing for a hair light in a few of them.  Live and learn I guess.

Overall it was a good night.  Met some friendly people and walked away with some fun photos for the day, which is always better than yet another shot of my cat.

Thanks again to the folks at South East Customz for providing the cars and the promo girls, as well as helping to organize the shoot itself.  I don’t think we would have managed the number of shots we did without those guys lining up the cars so we could do one after another without much hassle.

There are a few more shots in the gallery.

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.

It’s that time of the year again and I’ve just realized I never got around to making a Christmas post last year.  I may have to add that in retroactively once I’m finished with this one.

Having gone home and experienced Canadian winters last year, I was more than happy to stay in London where the thermometer rarely dips below 0°C.  Also, it was to be my first official Christmas with Danni so taking off and leaving her on her own didn’t seem like the thing to do for the festive season.

We spent Christmas eve together eating way too much and watching several Christmas movies (you can’t go wrong with Elf).  Sleep came easily after a few pints, a trick I’m willing to bet my mom would have paid good money to learn when I was an over-excitable child waiting for Santa.  There’s probably something to be said about giving children beer, but I’m sure there’s a balance to be struck there.

Danni was up shortly before 6am Christmas morning, but I made her sleep for another hour and she was content to open her stocking (sound familiar mom?) while I collapsed back into a coma.

After the gifts were opened (the winning gift being my new kindle!) it was time to get our Christmas dinner rolling.  We’d done a bit of prep work the day before but I’d never made a turkey myself so it was all a bit overwhelming.  Undaunted, and with the support of a few trips to youtube, some emails and phone calls home I was on my way.

Nothing says Christmas like a bacon wrapped turkey!  While it was in the oven doing it’s thing, we took the time to set up a mini photography studio in the living room to do some holiday portraits.  I love playing with the lights, but Danni tends to get impatient so it was just a simple 2 light setup on either side of the camera.  Large shoot through on camera right as the main light, small silver bounced umbrella on the far left.

After the portraits, I spent an hour or so getting the side dishes ready and did quite well getting everything out in time.  We used the fancy upstairs dinning table for the first time since moving into this flat (as well as the dumbwaiter, which every flat should have) and it all turned out really nicely.

There are quite a few more photos in the gallery.

I thought I’d also make a quick mention of the project I’m going to attempt in 2011.  A photo a day for the entire year.  I’ve set up a separate website specifically for this endeavor, but the photos will be posted in the usual gallery and can also be accessed here.  I’ll likely post a monthly round-up at the end of each month with my favourite images from the previous few weeks here, just as a little reminder more than anything.

Wish me luck!