We went back to Canary Wharf again this weekend after our slightly failed attempt a couple of weeks ago.  This time we jumped through the proper hoops and got a permit to be there, so the security guards (who were all very friendly) weren’t able to send us packing.

Ian wasn’t able to make it this week due to a football related knee injury, so I was joined by none other than Lee Crawley from Crawley (the gent who created my new toaster icon).  He’s done some cool light painting in the past, but I believe this was his first orb outing.

We even tried to combine our 2 light painting styles as seen in the above image (the light ribbon to the left), and even more so in this shot.

Still kicking myself for not creating a proper orb in this shot, but I could only manage a 1 minute exposure so had to do all of that in the time available.

This is the first time I’m posting watermarked images, which I know can be a bit annoying.  They are however at almost twice the resolution I used to post images at, so there’s good news with the bad.

The rest are in the gallery here!

ps:  thanks again to Ian for sorting out the permit for us, and to Lee for being my trigger man and making sure my compositions were ok while I spun the orbs.

Well, sort of.  The plan was to head into Canary Wharf and take a few shots in some predetermined locations with my new orb tools.  That plan was quickly kyboshed by the (friendly) security guards in Canary Wharf.  They quickly detailed the area in which we weren’t allowed to shoot which, by chance or by karmic bad luck, happened to cover every spot I was hoping to visit.

They were nice enough to explain how to go about getting permission to shoot there however.  After my impending company has left and Danni and I have returned from our trip to Greece I plan on doing just that and going back to get the shots I wanted.

Here is the one and only shot we (Ian Schofield and I) managed to get before being moved along.

The rest were taken (in almost child like defiance) from across the water but facing back into the area we weren’t allowed to photograph.

We were actually approached by another security guard in this last location, but he didn’t seem to mind what we were doing.  He was just curious I think.

I have learned that it’s very hard to find a good location in London that’s dark enough to get these orbs to turn out well.  Everywhere is so brightly lit that the light pollution makes everything fade away into the background.  I believe it simply calls for brighter orbs!

Few more in the gallery here.

After several screw-ups I managed to create a working orb tool in no small part thanks to the tutorial here.  I made one modification to that design in that I added in the ability to swap out different coloured lights from the base unit.  I’ll post some photos and a bit of a run down/tutorial on exactly what I did later this week.

Anyways, I hopped on the bus out to St. Paul’s on Saturday night and slowly wandered back home taking photos along the way.  My mate Sylvester turned up part way through and helped out with a couple of shots which I couldn’t have done without said assistance, so cheers mate!

As usual, there are a few more in the gallery.

Despite the rain, several hardy POTN members (plus a few guests) made the trek to the Gherkin this past Saturday evening.  The initial plan was just to take a few well intentioned shots of the city; architectural photos of some interesting land marks or bizarre/unique designs.  I had brought some of my lighting gear with the intention of trying a few things out, but quickly learned I hadn’t planned well enough (for uninteresting reasons I won’t bore you with here).

Fortunately, Swaffs was on the ball and had a well working string of Christmas lights that were ideal for what I wanted to try out.  In fact, he had brought it along for the very same reason.  Orbing.

If you’re not familiar with these types of shots, there’s a fairly big assortment of them on Flickr.  There’s a group discussion of orbing here, and Rich was kind enough to make a video of me making one of the orbs here to demystify the process even further.

There’s one or two more orb images in the gallery, plus a few more non-orb images like these two of the Gherkin and Leadenhall Market.

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.