I was out with a few of the guys from POTN again this past Friday.  The plan was to get a few London Landmark photos for Ian to adorn his walls with, but I ended up spending a lot of my time playing with lights again.  It had been a while since I’d made any orbs and didn’t want to get too out of practice.  Also, I’ve been chatting with quite a few folks on Flickr about making the orb tools so it sort of put me back in the mood.

Neal and I walked from my place along the north bank to St. Paul’s, shooting the standard stuff along the way and trying to stay warm.  After my recent trip to Harbin I figured that the -2 degree weather wouldn’t bother me that much, but given enough time it’s hard to distinguish -2 from -20.

I spent most of the evening playing around with my tilt-shift lens.  I love it for shooting buildings and it’s even fun to play with when light painting.  It’s nice because it’s a slow-to-use lens that makes you take your time and think about what you’re doing, and manual focus always adds to the challenge.

Tide was out so we got down under the millennium bridge for a few of the ‘standard’ photos of it and St. Paul’s.  It’s one of those scenes that’s so often photographed that I just don’t have the creative capacity to shoot something new.  Still, I’m content with the results of the evening.

Also, I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen an orb done in this location before so it’s got to count as unique right?

Couple more images in the gallery.

Long have I wanted to go to the city of Harbin and witness the Ice festival for myself.  As we were going to be in China at the same time as the festival, I couldn’t think of a better time to make the trek.  Danni’s parents were more than generous to cover the costs of my trip as a way of welcoming me into their family.  I was a bit uncomfortable about accepting, but was told that it’s simply the tradition so I tried to be as gracious and grateful as possible.

Arriving alone in a country where very few people speak your language is daunting, but I’ve done it before and managed so I didn’t think I’d have any issues doing it again.  Which likely would have been true had the airline not lost my luggage on a direct flight from Guangzhou to Harbin.  Fortunately I had the dynamic team of Danni and her mom to harass the complaints department until my lost suitcase turned up.  4 days later when I was due to leave, but I was happy to have it back regardless.

I don’t normally mind when the airline loses my bag as it (so far) always turns up in the end.  This time however, it was more inconvenient than usual as the suitcase contained all of my warm clothes an my trusty tripod.  Had I known that my bag was going to be MIA for the duration of my trip I would have simply picked up some more warm clothes, but instead I took an optimistic ‘It’ll be here on the next flight’ approach and dealt with the -25ºC weather as best I could.

The ice buildings were by far the highlight of my trip.  Massive, multi-story buildings constructed of ice and lit from within by every changing lights, it was everything I’d hoped it would be.  I had a grin frozen to my face (quite literally after a few hours in that cold) the entire time I was there.  I managed to push a few kids of out the way and ride most of the ice slides like every good 6 year old should and spent as much time as humanly possible taking photos.

Here are a few more from the trip, some of which are up there with my all time favourite images I’ve ever taken.  Such an amazing place and fortunately it changes every year so I have an excuse to go back!  Not that I would have needed one.

There are quite a few more images of this incredible place in the gallery.  I wish I could say I did it justice, but it’s one of those places you really have to visit to fully appreciate.  Let me know if you’re going, I’ll likely tag along!

After dating for over a year now, it was time to make the trip to China to meet Danni’s parents.  It’s always a fairly daunting thing to meet your girlfriends immediate family, and even more so when that family speaks very little English.

I believe we managed quite well with the little Mandarin I do speak and Danni translating the rest (which to be honest was about 95% of our conversations).  I will say that I’ve never eaten so well, or so much as I did under the care of Danni’s family, and they were more than welcoming to me and my odd western habits.

Guangzhou is a little bit like Hong Kong in that you can’t build a proper sky scraper without covering it in millions of colour changing lights in an ever increasing effort to outshine the previously completed building.  It makes for a great evening skyline, but the light pollution (not to mention the normal pollution) is something else.

It’s also a bit of an odd city in that I didn’t notice a single old car and conversely, I didn’t see one new bicycle.  There’s probably something poignant to be said about how this reflects the disparity of the wealthy and the poor, but I’m just not that deep.  Sorry if you were expecting something more!

Danni was an excellent tour guide and we even managed to visit a few spots she hadn’t been to while living there.  Lots of parks and a few ‘Old Guangzhou’ museums balanced nicely with busy shops and crowded high streets.  As it was approaching Chinese New Year the public transport system was heavily burdened and the crush of people in the metro was almost unbearable.  Fortunately taxi’s were incredibly cheap (if not a little bit difficult to acquire) so we mostly stayed above ground away from the shoving millions.

After two weeks I made my teary goodbyes and flew back to London with a suitcase pregnant with even more food; presumably with the assumption that I hadn’t eaten nearly enough.  2kg’s over the baggage limit, but the check-in girl took pity on me…

Lots of additional photos in the gallery here.

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!

Depending on how you look at it, London has been blessed or cursed with a fair bit of snow over the past few days.  For me, I love it!  It’s just hovering around freezing which means it’s not too cold to be out for a stroll or to shoot a few shots.  If you happen to have any desire to travel to or from London itself by any of the available means then it’s more akin to an extended Freddy Krueger style nightmare with very little chance of escape.

The Canadian in me can’t help but chuckle a little bit at these catastrophic weather events that bring tens of millimeters of snow and drag the city to it’s knees.  Back home we call this sort of weather June.

Not one to be an ungrateful foreigner who moans about the country I feel I have to say I really do love living here.  But honestly, every year the snow falls and every year the government & transportation services look up into the sky and claim that Armageddon is at last upon us.  Everything shuts down for days while some department does a feasibility study on whether or not the country should invest in the infrastructure that would be able to handle such a mild dusting of snow.

The answer comes days after the snow is gone and is inevitably No, which sets us up perfectly to do it all again when the next blizzard arrives.

Anyway, the whole reason I was out on Saturday night (after consuming festive beverages the four nights prior) was to celebrate a friends birthday and enjoy some of the pre-Christmas spirit.  As a result, I felt at the time that my photos were a lot better than they actually were, hence all of the heavy processing to salvage a few of the shots.

There are a couple more in the gallery as per usual.