Birmingham Canal Bridge

Birmingham has a lot of canals. More than Venice apparently. This is a path up to a narrow bridge that crosses one of the canals. I liked the brickwork, slightly damp. When I took this I was thinking black and white would work best. However, I found that by just warming the picture up a bit it worked just as well in colour.

Snow on Piccadilly

More snow. Here I'm looking towards Piccadilly Circus. The large statues in the centre are a memorial to the Crimean War, being covered in snow is somewhat apt. On the left of the centre piece is a statue of Florence Nightingale.

The Mall in the Snow

Lots of snow in London over the past few days. This photo I took when crossing the road. Not much traffic and what there was was going slowly. This is looking towards Buckingham Palace. It is snowing at this point, just not very heavily.

Birmingham Selfridges

I was up in Birmingham the other day. I had never been to the centre before so was looking forward to seeing it. The Selfidges building has proven to be very popular with photographers since its construction, hardly a surprise as it's an impressive building. This of course creates a challenge in taking a different photograph of it. To that end I tried this, lining the Church up with Selfridges , I haven't seen a picture like this (doesn't mean there aren't plenty). I like it. As I didn't have a tripod with me I had to push the ISO and try hand held at 1/20th sec using a very heavy 24-70 2.8L lens.

Nightime Photography

I decided to investigate some of the functions on my little Ixus camera. I usually only do point and shoot with it as I do more serious stuff with my professional camera. Anyway I thought I'd try some experimental nighttime photography with it and found a 'fireworks' setting (I don't have a user manual for the Ixus. To take this shot I selected a brightly lit shop between two darker ones pressed the shutter and rotated the camera. It's a bit hit and miss as I wasn't sure how long the shutter would remain open. Anyway, I got this image which I quite like.

Black and White Snow

I took this photo in colour but intended from the off to convert it to black and white. I was drawn by the shape and texture of the branches. I feel this kind of image works best in black and white.