21 Dec 06 follow santa!

This past Saturday I had quite a surreal day keeping up with an estimated 620+ ’santas’ touring London pubs and landmarks from noon to midnight! Santacon is an annual dressup event/party that’s picking up participants all over the world, and it makes for an incredibly fun day out! Next year I’ll be sure to wear the red suit, but this time I went with the purpose to take photos imagining 30-50 santas might turn out… Locations visited by the swarming santas included Tate Modern, Camden High Street, Trafalgar Square, Jubilee Gardens (London Eye), Leicester Square fun fair and a few pubs in between. To see a few more photos I took on the day, see here.

1 Dec 06 Shopping frenzy tomorrow

I’ve finished all my shopping for the season but I’ve got plans to enter the belly of the Beast tomorrow anyway.

The Beast? That is Oxford Street, where Londoners go do their core ‘high street’ shopping. That’s where the sidewalks (or ‘pavements’) are far too narrow to meet the demand of the throng of shoppers on any regular London day. Now that it’s Christmas shopping season, unless you aim to arrive between Monday and Wednesday early in the am and escape by tube before lunch, you just don’t want to be there. Sharp elbows or not.

Ideally the street would be closed to all vehicular traffic year-round - no taxis, no buses - as pedestrians currently push and pull too much for the average window shopper’s comfort.

Tomorrow has been branded Shop West End / VIP (Very Important Pedestrian) Day: for the first time ever the whole of Oxford Street, from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch, and Regent Street, from Piccadilly Circus past Oxford St, will be closed to traffic for “a day of entertainment and shopping” (from 10:30am-5:00pm). For those uncertain, that adds up to a few miles of busy, central road. Here’s the closure map (PDF), so come on down…

And forget the shopping - this is a street party! Last year Oxford Street alone was closed for a similar event and 500,000 people turned out :D

Really though, it’s a great opportunity to do some street photography with more ‘models’ turning out than usual. Also on the streets will be Santas and reindeer and brass bands and … beautiful lights strung across the streets every 30ish feet. Should be a good time!

Glad my shopping is done though.

19 Sep 06 Photo Exhibition!

Some exciting news… Two prints of mine have been selected for the London Independent Photography annual exhibition! It’s the first time I’ll have framed work on public display, so it’s quite a thrill, really. I look forward to meeting the other photographers and seeing their images in the show. The details:

London Independent Photography’s 18th Annual Photographic Exhibition
Sunday 15 October - Saturday 28 October 2006
Cottons Atrium at Hay’s Galleria, Southwark (map)
Free admission

Richard Sadler FRPS and Sara Macintosh MA, both of whom have a keen professional eye for exciting, intriguing and engaging work, have selected entries for this 18th annual exhibition, which showcases the best independent photography in London.

18 Jul 06 Tower Music Festival

It’s been and gone, but last week Matt and I attended a concert as part of a music festival at the Tower of London. The performances spanned two weeks with headliners including Pet Shop Boys, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy and James Brown. We had no plans to go, but I got lucky and won tickets for the Madeleine Peyroux show from a community magazine that was delivered to our flat. With tickets selling for £35 each it was a pretty good deal!

The Tower is just a 10 minute walk from our place and we had perfectly beautiful weather for spending the evening in the Tower moat. Ticket holders were encouraged to arrive early and linger on the lawn with picnic and wine before the show started. When you finished up you could check your baskets into a tent for pickup after the concert, just like checking your coat.

Lounging around on the grass in the evening sun was great, but later the audience was herded into rows of uncomfortable, connected plastic chairs. Not so great. There was some space to stand, far back from the stage and behind the banks of seats, but overall the atmosphere was orderly and ‘civilised’.

The opening act, ‘Athena’, was a disappointment - a female singer attempting a vague imitation of Sarah McLachlan meets Tori Amos, without success. Madeleine Peyroux on the other hand, who we had never heard of before the nigh, was a treat. Her voice is more than reminiscent of Billie Holiday’s and she sings several covers, including songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed.

3 May 06 Some fun events coming up

This week the Sultan’s Elephant is coming to town! Over four days the show travels through central London “in the area around Horse Guards Parade in St James’s Park, St James’s, Piccadilly, Haymarket and Trafalgar Square.” Thousands of people will be chasing this enormous elephant around, which should make for some fun photo opportunities. Surely Saturday at Trafalgar Square in particular will be mayhem. Here’s the timetable for the show’s whereabouts.

Coming up on Sunday the 14th is the Bangla New Year celebration “Baishakhi Mela” on Brick Lane. “Brick Lane itself will be pedestrianised throughout the day and transformed into a bustling market place with over 45 curry houses spilling out on to the pavement offering curry alfresco alongside 100’s of stalls giving a taste of Bangladesh through the wide range of Merchandise such as handicrafts and traditional Bangladeshi fashion wears.” All that goodness plus music, art and juggling clowns!

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