Finally I have got round to editing this. I was hoping for a concise entry but I quickly realised that 1. I have a lot to say even if I manage some semblance of being concise and 2. this was an oddity of a trip that actually requires an entry about each area I visited that day.
So I continue...
My trips to London have mostly been for two fold reasons, taking photographs and seeing my friends who made the move. As I see so little of my mates now compared to while at University I usually do little intentional photography for my art as all my time is spent having fun. On the Saturday evening we had as a group descended on the Spitalfields area to celebrate a birthday with boozing and 50's style bowling. While there I was told about Sundays in the same area, cool markets Brick Lane and the such. Since I already knew I would be having a rare Sunday to myself it sounded like an excellent plan.
A quick note: I am not entirely against combining the two reasons to come to London. It is just the way I inevitably work is not usually group friendly. I tend to walk a lot, I rarely stop moving and when I do it is for the purpose of some image I have half seen. Sometimes capturing said image might require me to go off the beaten track, do strange and potentially embarrassing things (like lie down on the pavement) wander where you might not expect to go and generally follow some impulse or other. There have been many occasions that the shot I want requires me to kneel down halfway across a road. And none of these behaviours suit a group activity.
I realised that the Spitalfields area would not take all day and although I could do as I usually would and just go to an adjoining area (Shoreditch, Hoxton etc) I actually had another idea in mind from a planned trip that had yet to happen. I had wanted to go to Heathrow to see if I could get photographs of tourists and planes in much the same spirit of Malcolm Moreley's cruise ships. As you can see from this and the previous post it has been on my mind. Prior research told me that Heathrow might be troublesome without some pre arranged clearance to prove I wasn't an evil terrorist type (my lack of two mobile phones might have stood in my favour however). I decided instead to take a DLR ride to the Thames Barrier and London City Airport. Places I had never ever been near before which in London is a rarity for me. Unfortunately it being a Sunday meant that transport and especially the DLR was quite erratic.
So I started out at Liverpool Street Station after having taken the bus from London Bridge. It is quite a nice journey in fact crossing the river over London Bridge where you can see HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge in one direction. A view I had seen the Friday night previously and have plans to revisit. You also get nice views of Southwark cathedral and for me some unusual overground views of the area around Monument, which I have done previously but it was quite some time ago.
Outside Liverpool Street I took a moment to try to find a nice angle to photograph the Station for a future project I have in mind. I then wandered towards the areas we had been the previous evening, having no particular goal in mind but to investigate. I ended up wandering through Petticoat Lane market which was a riot of colour and people. Slightly claustrophobic and although it was enjoyable it was also pretty hard to get photos in. The fact of it is that in any close quarters environment you will really struggle to get a well composed image that doesn't have someones head in the way. This is an example when many people are detrimental to my process. Luckily I did find an excellent vantage point halfway up a set of stairs into a council estate at the junction of three roads literally covered in market stalls.
I continued to roam along the market until I came out at one end to the main road. Checked the map as I still hadn't found the particular area we had been in the evening before and headed towards the indoor market. It was interesting but alas it was also indoors (no sky!) so after a couple of photos I moved on. Eventually I located the place we had been the night before saw the infamous vegan restaurant in a red Routemaster, got some interesting shots of that area and looked around a few more indoor markets working my way up to and along Brick Lane. Although not directly related to my artistic concerns I have to say that that area probably has the greatest variety of food stalls I have ever seen. Seriously, pick a country and I'm sure you could find a cuisine from it or its nearest neighbours.
Brick Lane continued the Sunday market theme. Stalls lined the road from Hanbury Street to Bethnal Green Road and produced another interesting photographic situation. Most people who know me will know my fascination with VW camper vans, well as I walked up Brick Lane I came across a very pretty and very shiny chrome Citron van acting as a mobile coffee stand. While not a VW it was very nice looking and with the sunlight reflecting off it, all the colourful people (I love how summer gets people in colours other than black, grey and blue) and the strong blue sky behind it I felt it would be worth a shot. Alas a common problem appeared, that of too many fast moving people.
In this shot I wanted people at the van and no or very few people around it. I didn't want people in front of me obscuring the van. As I may have said before this means I need to get my shot quickly however this doesn't always pan out. In this situation it was a relatively open space in the market, good for the image but also a place where people either walked faster or would pause for breath. In any case I spent quite sometime there trying for a shot and leaving unsure that I managed to get a decent one. As it turns out I think I got a couple of doozies.
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