Street Photography

London with Ollie

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My friend Ollie had to go to the University College London for an interview. Since a) you don’t pay £16 (or £24 if like me you leave your railcard at home…) to go to London for half an hour and b) it’s no fun to visit London on your own, I went along and we visited the National Gallery and the British Museum. In the National Gallery I had fun reverse engineering the lighting techniques of the masters, and I got told off for taking a picture of the cupula in the entrance hall when we were leaving (I had asked one of the wardens about photography restrictions earlier and what he said sounded like no photography of the paintings was allowed.) In the British Museum photography is fine, but it’s also one of those places that’s been photographed to death so it’s difficult to take something new there.
While Ollie went to his interview I visited Jacobs Digital Photo & Video where they had a pretty good deal on Manfrotto 5001B Nanos (I have no idea what the difference between those and the 001Bs which they replace is, they look the same to me). I had also planned a visit to The Flash Centre but by the time we got there they were closed. So we went to a pub instead.


Über den Wolken

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Our flight route

Our flight route

Back in the summer of 2008 I flew in a balloon over part of Luxembourg. I had been given a voucher for a flight by my secondary school, the Lycée Hubert Clement Esch as part of my baccalaureate, and it was sponsored by LuxGSM, so thanks to both of those. Now I actually got my diploma back in 2005, but it took the Cercle Luxembourgeois de l’Aerostation a while to take me along on a flight…
Anyway, we drove to a field near Hivange, asked the farmer for permission and got ready for take-off. I had to help get the balloon ready so there are no pictures of that. We flew over plenty of small towns that I didn’t really recognize from up above, one of the places I did recognize fairly easily though was the Aire de Berchem (and in case you were wondering, no, the police car did not stop at the stop sign), the pig farm near the Kuelbicher Haff (the latter is hidden rather well in the woods) and the Mariendaller Haff, near which we landed gently in another field – this time we didn’t ask the farmer’s permission beforehand though :) And with gently I mean that none of my camera equipment got damaged when the basket tipped over during the landing. That’s all that matters, my head has seen its share of bumps.
The title refers to the song Über den Wolken by Reinhard Mey.


Dover Society Trip

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In autumn I’ve already visited Dover, this time I went with the Photography and Modelling Society. Most of our trip was spent exploring Dover Castle, which was closed last time I went.


London, along the river

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I couldn’t very well live two hours away from London for three years and not go there to take some photographs at night. Alison and I took a ride on the London Eye, then walked along the river waiting for the sun to set. The HDRs have been combined using Photomatix Pro 3. The zoomable hi-res panorama of the Tower Bridge below has been stitched using PTGui and is presented here using PSCS3’s Zoomify plugin, integrated into WordPress using the Kimili flash plugin.
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Dover

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Essays handed in. Sun in the sky. Trains on time.


DPChallenge London GTG

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Once again a bunch of crazy photographers met to walk around London in the rain and take pictures. This time the get-together had a slightly more international feel: Olivier and I represented Luxembourg (we’re used to the rain and the cold). Alison and Mikey from the Photography and Modelling Society represented Bermuda and Barbados, respectively (they’re not used to temperatures below 15°C). The four of us who are or have been studying in the UK met up with Natalya, Andi, Robert, Dain and Matthew. Some of their photos can be found in the DPChallenge.com forums, here. Apart from taking photos, by walking about three miles we also contributed to the Walk Around the World for Brain Tumours.
Related links: International Brain Tumor Alliance, Rose McGill, Digital Photography Challenge.


Hengendag

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The eve of the Luxembourg national day, “Nationalfeierdag”, is one of those occasions on which our small capital seems to be bursting at the seams. I set out with my newly acquired 50mm 1.4 USM lens to capture the athmosphere of the evening and it didn’t take long before I bumped into some friends, then I moved on to watch the torchlight procession and the fireworks. Seeing as the last time I watched them I ended up with smoldering firework chemicals in my eye I chose a safer spot this time though.


DPC Canterbury GTG

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For some reason it has rained at each and every DPChallenge get-together I’ve been to over the last year. No surprise then that the one I hosted myself didn’t greet us with sunshine. Even so Dain McGowan came all the way down to Canterbury to explore the city and the cathedral with me and Sebastian Andersson. In the afternoon we went up to campus to take photos at Artsfest.


A trip to the city

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In between revising for my upcoming university exams there remains some time for photography. During my stay in Luxembourg I met up with photographer John Oesch for a shooting with model Kimberley at the Abbaye Neumünster. From there I went on to take the first photograph shown above, which I entered in the Photogen competition ‘Luxembourg City’. A bit later I continued for an exploration of the Kirchberg area.


DPChallenge.com GTG 12, London

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Once again users of DP Challenge met in London. Once again, it rained. This time I had a few more people from the UKC Photography and Modeling Society with me: Kristel, Charlotte, Ibi and his friend Dan. We walked from the London Eye past Westminster to Trafalgar Square, then to Buckingham Palace and back to the Southwark. Here is another group shot by Mark Simms. And here is one of me by Deb Fort.
For the photos that everyone else took check out the DPC forum photo thread.


DPChallenge.com GTG 11, London

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Once again dpchallenge.com users met up in London to hang out and take photographs. This was the eleventh get-together held in London and quite a few photographers and one model, Elika, from the UKC Photographers and Models Society braved the pouring rain.
This was the first time I got to use my new Peleng 8mm Fisheye; I apologize if I used it a bit too much.
The forum thread with everyone else’s pictures is here, and here are links to the attending photographers’ user pages on DPC: DainMcgowan, booboo_goon, Mr_Pants, MAK, Ecce Signum, Hanae, Simms, Talj, Moe (who doesn’t seem to have a profile), and myself, gloda.


Streeta(rt)nimation

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