Madness I hear you shout, 45 miles of walking but, I didn’t plan on walking so far (I never do), but when I get focused I’m like the energizer bunny, I just keep going and going. My weekend started at 8 am, the weather was perfect, sunny and hot and all I needed was to be on my A-game and boy was I.
Let talk about the gear I took to London this weekend, as you know I only take one camera and lens with me, however, I still had the camera that Olympus UK lent me and with the sunny weather I knew I wanted to shoot with a wider lens, with that I decided to take the E-M1 mark 2 and the 17mm F1.8 which give me a 35mm focal length. I also had my Fujifilm X-T2 along with my one and only lens the 56mm F1.2. I do wish the 56mm didn’t weigh as much as it does, I end up feeling it by the end of the day.
I started my day in London’s Chinatown (no surprises there) and within minutes of arriving I got the following 2 photos:
What a weekend I had, not only was I getting some great street photos but I also was out shooting with 2 friends, Nick and Christian and it had been a while since we’d shot together. Both myself and Christian had spent a few days last year shooting in London’s royal parks, so with the weather being so nice we decided to head into the parks, this turned out to be a great decision.
Walking through London’s Hyde Park, I was shooting mostly with the Olympus and I’d been playing around with the monochrome settings the night before and this started to pay off, the monochrome was looking great on the back of the camera. Walking around the park I was glad to be shooting with a wide-angle lens, this was perfect for the photos I was trying to capture and one of my favourites from the park was this one:
I love how the gentleman is sitting in the chair, this shot wouldn't have been possible to get if I’d been using my 56mm. This has got me thinking about maybe getting another 23mm F2 or maybe a Ricoh GR.
The 3 of us had a rest by the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, this was packed with people I was taking photos of the families enjoying the water, this is a beautiful spot right in the middle of the park and if you have young children I’d recommend it for the afternoon in the sun. The 3 of us got soaked, the children didn’t seem to care about anyone sitting near the water, all in good fun of course and we didn’t mind as it was bloody hot. I did get approached by a woman asking why I was taking photos of the children and did I know it was against the law, which it isn’t, I showed her what I was taking, but she wasn’t happy and she started filming me.
I was out shooting til 02:30 Sunday morning and then I was back on the streets after just 3 hours of sleep, London first thing on a Sunday morning is something else. There is hardly anyone around and the city is so still and peaceful, perfect for street photography.
On the Sunday I meet up with a young gentleman from the US Deondre, he was on holiday with his family and had taken the day to do some photography. We spent a good few hours shooting together, this was fun and it also helped light a spark in me and I really started to enjoy my time shooting.
We also bumped into Mark who was running a one to one workshop, Mark had just come out of Somerset house and he mentioned about this spot inside, he told me I should check it out and within minutes of finding it I captured the following photo:
The thing is I still prefer Mark’s photo from this area, which is here:
