Photography
Fishermen on the harbour wall at dawn at Brighton Marina.
Fishing boats in harbour for Christmas and a train of skips.
Lots of colour, shapes and textures.
The shortest day at the winter solstice heralds Saturnalia, the midwinter festival in honour of the god Saturn and fertility. The fresh buds and green shoots of spring are pushing phallicly skywards in search of light whilst catkins, the flowers of the hazel tree, droop curvaceously downwards.
Fulham’s busy North End Road was made traffic-free for one day only as an initiative to show how a lack of traffic could create a “vibrant, attractive shopping area”. Not a Christmas Market in this very mixed borough though there were the smoky barbecues cooking what has evolved as the traditional finger food for a Christmas market. Nor any street decorations or lights, neither religious Christmas or winter festival. Simply an expanded market filling the space on the street usually occupied by motorists.
View from Waterloo Bridge of the City of London and the towers of Canary Wharf in the distance down river. It’s staggering how much the London skyline has changed in the past few years. St. Pauls cathedral no longer dominates the landscape except from a couple of protected viewpoints. New blocks with colourful names now push skywards in the winter sunshine.
The best camera is the one you have in your hand. Quite so just now, finding myself unexpectedly in London’s West End and avoiding the rush hour crush entering Oxford Circus tube station, the obvious alternative is to walk down Carnaby Street to Piccadilly Circus.
What’s more, Carnaby Street lights are more interesting than the rather staid and comparatively dim Christmas lights strung between the big name shops in Regent Street and Oxford Street.
A “proper” camera with a tripod would have got a different result...
