Category: London

A Nelson photo of mine finds a new home

In the summer of 2007 I was wandering along the south bank of the Thames with my Canon S2 IS, and came across this statue, outside a pub in Greenwich, called the Trafalgar Tavern:

I only got around to posting that photo at this blog in 2016, such time lags being frequent here. It often takes me a while to appreciate how nice I think a certain photo is.

But 2016 proved soon enough for the lady who did this sculpture of Lord Nelson, for her new website was only then in the process of being put together. An email arrived early this year asking me if I would mind any of my photos being used for this website, and if I was agreeable to this (which I was), could I supply original full-sized versions of all the decent photos I had taken of His Lordship? Which I did. I also asked, more in hope than expectation, to be informed if and when any use was made of any of my photos, and I then forgot the matter.

But then, a week ago, another email arrived saying that the photo above of Nelson was to be seen at the website, now up and running, of Lesley Pover, at the page where it says Nelson returns to Greenwich. I even got a name check with a link back to here, at the bottom of that page.

All of which is most gratifying. Ms Pover and her website maker have said their thanks to me. I in my turn am grateful to be associated, if only in a very small way, with such an accomplished artist, and to have made a contribution to such a fine looking website.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

An imperfect posting (with a photo)

This blog regularly suffers from this condition:

The maxim “Nothing avails but perfection” may be spelt shorter: “ Paralysis”.

Today, for instance, I journeyed forth, north, and got some great photos. But I want to get my report of today’s photo-triumphs exactly right, which means that, quite possibly, I won’t ever report them at all. How paralytic is that? Very.

However, this evening, I met some people who every now and again take a look at this blog. Not a read of it, you understand. They look. At the photos. So here is a photo for such “readers”, taken just over a decade ago, of a lady with a nice headscarf taking a photo with her then state-of-the-art but now hopelessly out-of-date mobile phone:

It was not long before then that I started seriously trying to take photos of photoers that excluded their faces.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Two shiny windows

Once again today is nearly over, yet I have posted nothing here. I have several non-quota postings about half done, but nothing blog-ready. So, here is, instead, this:

From the I Just Like It Directory.

I just like it because of the contrast between the shiny windows with their out of focus, curved reflections, and the Concrete Monstrosity style concrete that surrounds the windows, the concrete being in focus, not shiny, not curvey. I like that contrast. That’s exactly as it came out of the camera. No cropping or photo-enhancing.

Taken in Victoria Street, opposite where New Scotland Yard used to be. Not that that matters.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Haunted!!

The previous posting, with its references to Gaspard de la nuit, had a tenuous Halloween vibe to it. But do I have any recent photos to show you, with a ghostly or spooky angle to them?

I’m afraid the best I can do is a photo of a sign on the side of a boat that I photoed on the day I also took these photos.

Here is the boat:

And here is the sign on the side of it:

I know. Not very scary.

Nevertheless, this points to a real problem of living in a canal boat. Security. As these boats multiply, and as it becomes more chic to live this way, in a manner often practised by people who are away at work for long periods, so too will the number of thieves who have a go at preying on them.

But on reflection, if I was a thief, I think the above sign might put me off. It suggests a concern about resisting thievery, and also a certain willingness to think unconventionally. What if some unsupernatural ghosts have been artificially contrived, to aid in the boat’s defence? Yes, I think I’d try another boat.

Every little helps.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Nova diagonals revealed

Nova, the building that this year triumphed in that infallible guide to architectural interestingness, the Carbuncle Cup, is a new London building that I am already very fond of. And this despite the apparent unrelatedness of the red bits and the other bits, as photoed in this recent photo that I photoed:

However, even more recently, I came upon Nova from an angle and at a time of day that told me more:

You can probably already see what I am getting at, just from that photo. And you can click on that photo to get an even bigger photo. But, if you do that, you will find it even harder to see what I am getting at.

Because, this is one of those instances where, in order to see what I am getting at, you need to see this same photo smaller, as shown on the right of this verbiage. Yes indeed, there you see it even more clearly. Diagonals galore. Here is another example of the same thing. Again, you have to make it smaller to see it clearly.

None of which will persuade Nova-haters that they should become Nova-lovers. But it seemed worth noting here nevertheless, given that I had noted it.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A better photo of One Kemble Street

Recently I went out looking for another good shot of Richard Seifert’s One Kemble Street, of which I am very fond, having already posted some fun photos of it as seen from the ROH Bar and two more rather so-so photos of it, along with a photo of another circular Seifert edifice, also with an anarchic hairdo.

But here is a better photo of One Kemble Street, that I took over a year ago, from the top of the Tate Modern Extension:

The thing is, when I’m out on one of my photo-wanders, the pattern is: Photo, forget. Photo, forget. Photo, forget. I hardly think at all about what I have just photoed. Almost all my thinking concerns the next photo.

When, usually about one day later, I look back at what I got, even then I don’t pay attention to anything like everything I got. Just some of it. Which means that when I look back at some directory or other a longish time later, I notice more photos, basically for the first time since just before I took them.

It’s tempting to assume that this is the result of me getting old. But I suspect that if I had had a digital camera when I was thirty, I would probably have forgotten most of the photos I took then, much as I do now. But, I do think that age probably reinforces this effect.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Photoers last Sunday

Last Sunday, in among photoing leaning tower cranes and Twentytwo.

I also photoed photoers. I could probably do blog postings for the next fortnight based on nothing but the photos I took that day. Don’t worry, I won’t. But I probably could.

Maybe I am not as keen on photoing photoers as I was a decade ago. Or maybe it is just that there are now lots of other things that I am also keen on photoing, and so my fellow photoers loom smaller in my thoughts when I am now out and about. But they still loom. I still like to photo photoers, whenever the opportunity presents itself:

It was such a lovely day (3.3), and all the better for being a bit misty (3.1 (a lot of zoom in that one, I think)). There was lots of interesting hair (1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 3.1, and best of all 3.2). There was even a very old-school small dedicated digital camera (1.2), of the kind that has been totally replaced by the mobile phone (unless, like this old guy, you have your old-school digital camera and you like to keep using it – this makes a lot of sense to old guy me.)

My keenness to photo architecture just grows and grows. I notice, and like, a new building, and from then on want to photo it from all angles and distances, basically from wherever I can see it, and aligned with whatever else I can find that is aligned with it.

I also delight in photoing architecture which is on the screens of my fellow photoers. The guy in 1.2, in addition to having interesting hair, is photoing the Boomerang.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Twentytwo

Last Sunday, I photoed those wonky looking cranes. I also took this photo:

That’s not at all what I think, but lots of people do think that those City of London Big Things are indeed follies. Follies being a show that the National Theatre, that concrete thing on the right, was advertising when I walked past it.

I find the Big Things of the City hard to keep track of, given that I do try. Let’s have a closer look at those vertical concrete lumps, that look they will turn into something very big:

There you go. Once you have a name like that, the gates of the Internet open.

So, what’s the City of London about to look like next? The most useful answer I got was this:

That being the picture at the top of a Londonist posting from last July.

Quote:

Based on the visuals, these projects are a mixed bag of ho-hum and coo-wow. Taken together, they make for a crowded cluster that’ll almost entirely obscure the much-loved Gherkin building, once so dominant on the skyline.

A particularly coo-wow part of the story being the Scalpel. See above.

The rather ungainly 22 Bishopsgate, which is going up where the Helter Skelter would have gone until the financing for it collapsed, is going to be the tallest Big Thing in London, for a short while, just until that big boxy tower (“1 Undershaft”) with the diagonals on it goes even higher.

22 Bishopsgate will have a free viewing platform, according to this report from two years ago:

At the top of the building will be a double-height public viewing gallery, which will have dedicated lifts, be free to the public and sit alongside a two-storey public restaurant and bar.

I can’t wait, as people say when they’re just going to have to wait and are actually quite capable of waiting, in a state of impeccable mental equanimity.

This is the kind of building of which it will be said: The view from 22 Bishopsgate is magnificent. From 22 Bishopsgate, you will not see 22 Bishopsgate. They used to say this about the National Theatre.

I sseem to recall taking some closer-up photos of all this activity a few months back. I must take another look at those. And … I just did. June 3rd, earlier this year.

I particularly like this one:

Very stylish.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The leaning tower cranes of London

I love cranes, especially those big tower cranes they use to build Big Things. So tall. But so thin. But they do trouble me. How do they stay up? Why don’t they ever fall over? Well, they do, sometimes. But mostly they don’t.

And, as I couldn’t help noticing when I was out and about last Sunday, these tower cranes often lean over, in a way that looks like it is asking for headline-making trouble.

Consider one of these cranes, the one on the right, that’s leaning over, about four degrees off of the vertical. How does that not fall over? (Thank you vertical lamp post for telling us what vertical is.)

Well, I’m guessing these people know what they’re doing. No, scrub that, I’d be amazed if they didn’t know what they’re doing. This kind of thing just has to be business as usual, no matter how crazy it may look to mere passers-by. As I discovered when I went looking for other leaning cranes in my photo-archives, and I found one that I had photoed just an hour earlier, on the same walkabout:

I think we may assume that the BT Tower is the very definition of vertical.

In each case, the crane is bent backwards by the big concrete blocks that compensate them for the lifting job they do with the other end of their tops. But when no lifting is happening, the compensating weight has no weight to compensate … it. And the result can look very scary.

No London cranes have been reported collapsing during the last few days. So, like I say, no problem.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Pavlova is back

I had a nice surprise today. As time passes, the number of places I can buy the Gramophone and the BBC Music Mag keeps on diminishing, one of the few that remains being W.H.Smith in Victoria Station. It was once again a beautifully lit late afternoon, and when I stepped outside the station concourse, I encountered this beautiful sight:

Yes, the wraps have come off Pavlova. And far sooner than I had been expecting.

Several of the above photos feature the new Nova building. This fine edifice was awarded this year’s Carbuncle Cup. The dreary grumblers who award this award think that it’s a badge of shame, but I generally find it, and its accompanying runner-up collections, to be a great source of information about interesting and often excellent new buildings. Nova is wonderful, I think. I intend (although I promise nothing), to say more about this enjoyably showy yet elegant addition to Victoria’s mostly rather lumpish architecture.

In 3.2, I got lucky with an airplane.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog