Radio early bird Julia Hartley-Brewer tweeted this photo, early this morning:
Best comment:
Enjoy it while you can Julia, because after BREXIT there will be NO sunrise. The Polish and Romanian workers who lift the sun up every morning will be gone.
Those laser beams that her camera has created make the sun look like a … white hole.
On August 2nd 2013, exactly five years ago today, there was a clutch of orange umbrellas above Lower Marsh. (Also (see bottom right), 240 Blackfriars Road was under construction.) I don’t believe I mentioned these umbrellas at the time I photoed them, and now, I can’t google my way to any sort of explanation of them. But, I think I recall investigating them at the time, and I think they were some kind of advert for an art gallery. This guy agrees that these umbrellas were indeed there, then, but he doesn’t say anything about them either.
Anyway, here they are, as I photoed them then:
The bottom left one looks to me like the head of some kind of oriental feline creature.
It’ll probably be quota photos every day here for as long as the heatwave lasts. Certainly that’s how it is today:
On the day I took this photo, I was so proud of a goose couple that I also photoed, a lot, that I hardly noticed this photo, of cranes and scaffolding. But when I was clicking through the archives, the way I do from time to time, this one stopped the clicking.
It’s the little bits of colour in a basically monotone photo, the strip of red on the crane, and in particular that little bit of yellow, bottom right, that made this photo particularly appealing. To me, anyway. I hope also to you.
I have what passes for me as a busy few days coming up, and this posting is me getting ahead of myself, with a quota photo:
That was taken from the top of the Tate Modern Extension, on the same day I photoed that pub fire.
What with the smoke from that fire, on an otherwise totally cloudless evening, having been blowing directly towards and in front of where the sunset was asserting itself, I rather think that the lurid colour of the sunset was enhanced by the smoke from the fire. In fact, looking again at my photo, I rather think we can see the suggestion of a band of smoke just below half way down. Yes, I’m fairly sure that’s the fire, photoshopping the sunset for me.
It’s an ill wind …
It is called, at any rate by the people who built it, The Peak. What it is called by others, in the event that they notice it at all, I don’t know. But it’s more likely to be something along the lines of “that peculiar and asymmetrical lump outside Victoria Station with the big curved metal roof on it, that looks like it was stuck on the top during a refurbishment of some ugly old block built in the sixties or seventies”.
Today, personal business took me to Victoria Station, but before descending from the main concourse of the station into the Underground, and encouraged by the spactacular not-a-cloud-in-the-sky weather, I took a look around outside.
And saw this:
That being the top of “The Peak”, and on top of that top, the rather splendid window cleaning crane that periodically emerges from that bizarre roof. I love these cranes, especially when they have odd hats on the way that one has, to make them merge right back into their roofs, when they resume their hibernation.
But today, that peculiar curvey metal bit that sticks out on the left, as we look, was also looking wonderful.
Although almost any building looks good on a day like today was, that particular combination of sights particularly appealed to me, and made me particularly pleased that I had interrupted my journey.
More and more, I have come to think of the reflections to be seen in windows as interesting things to photo, alongside the things you see through the windows.
Thus:
That’s Battersea Power Station and its crane cluster, photoed from a train, about to cross the river into Victoria, earlier in the month.
I know, it has the lights inside the train reflected in the window, and that is considered bad. But why is this a problem? I think it makes a rather interesting combination of sights.
I also like very much how the above photo also includes a small mention of the Shard, towards the bottom on the right:
My camera sees more than I do.
What the above sentence really means is that when I looked at the actual scene, when photoing it, I saw one thing, but when I look at the photo that I took, I see different things.
I now get to see more of that one scene. At the time I saw the scene, complete with its reflected lights, but then the train carried on moving and immediately showed me another scene, and another, and … . No wonder I didn’t see as much of the original scene.
Indeed:
I found that at the Spurs website. That’s how things are looking now, or at any rate pretty recently. From the sky.
Of greater interest to me is this:
Which I found here.
The black bit is a staircase, and a viewing platform:
… the views from the Tottenham Skywalk will be spectacular. The trek has five core stages which offer different vantage points and experiences for its visitors. The walk starts on the southern end of the western side of the stadium where the Skywalk ascent begins. Traveling up to Level 5, one continues on the external open walkway up towards the roof. This is a pretty wild concept. Supporters and visitors alike will be trudging up the outer facade, carabiners and all, where they will catch glimpses of the frenetic indoor pace of the stadium, while also viewing the vastness of greater London.
Carabiners? That means everyone roped together like mountain climbers. So, not just strolling up there, then. Even so, I just might give that a go. And I’ll be doing a lot more than “catch glimpses”, I can tell you. Here’s hoping cameras are allowed.
Here:
Lovely. Thank you Twitter.
It’s London, but the colour is Turkish delight. The sky being the chocolate and the sun being the filling.
The photos here were taken in nicer weather, by a much better photoer than me.
But my photo is better, because my photo has … cranes:
I have visited this place several times in the last few days, each time in the evening, each time attempting to buy a certain CD at nearby Foyles. Twice I was frustrated. First, because I misidentified the closing time of Foyles, on some obsolete website I think it must have been. Then, I forgot that yesterday was a bank holiday. Finally, today, I got my CD, and several other cheaper ones from their second-hand collection.
And, this evening, I finally got the photo I wanted of this tube exit, and its cranes. The key to it was: I had my camera ready to go when I stepped onto the escalator. And then when I wasn’t sure I had what I wanted, I went back down again, and up again. The trick was, taking the photo from near the bottom of the escalator, so that both cranes were included.
In addition to being willing sometimes to look like a perve, a photoer must also be willing sometimes to look like a prat.
A few hours ago, the Waterloo crane cluster was lit up by the evening sun, in front of dark clouds, an effect I love:
That was taken from the downstream Hungerford footbridge, just outside Embankment tube. Minutes after that it was chucking it down. And there was more thunder.
A fine night for the BBC to be showing King Lear.
I had already set the TV recorder.