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.

I’m up most mornings to see the sunrise these days, but due to the usual English weather (overcast) and my flats orientation (South West) I don’t get too excited about it.  And as a general rule, I also try to avoid overly complex things at 6am as I often find enough challenge in mundane tasks like opening the milk or heaven forbid, working the kettle.  Bringing my camera out during these sub-human hours is a daunting task, but every now and then I think it’s worth it.

Exhibit A

Just the one today, but the Miscellaneous album for 2010 is open now so I’ve got a place to file all of my disjointed shots at least.

I spent a bit of time in Hyde Park last evening trying to capture the latest autumn colours.  I think all of the photos that got posted from this set were done with my tilt-shift lens.  It doesn’t get as much use as it should, mainly due to being a manual focus lens and the fact that I’m rubbish at manual focusing.

I thought the fact that it would require more attention from me would help to slow me down and think about what I was shooting.  It succeeded in this, but mainly it succeeded in increasing the number of out of focus photos I ended with at the end of the day.  Always a learning process, and the lesson yesterday was to bring along a tripod and use LiveView 🙂

Here are a few keepers from the day and as usual, there are a few more in the gallery.

Got together with Neal, Mitesh and Neal’s friend Shaz this past weekend for a few shots of the city.  I was hoping for a longer day so that I could put the strobes & light stands I was hauling around (my poor back) to use, but that will have to wait for another time I guess.

Anyways, here’s a couple of shots I rather liked plus a few more in the gallery.