The picture above was taken through a puddle outside the Cathedral, I took quite a few reflections.  I love Southwark Cathedral, despite the fact that it doesn’t seem immediately very elegant – squashed beside the River Thames, Borough Market, the railway and London Bridge on the south side of the river.  In fact it was almost demolished to make way for the railway, and the compromise reached meant that the view of the Cathedral was significantly restricted.

I did have to get permission to shoot here and obtain a permit, but thereafter I was given free reign, providing I didn’t disturb people praying or the services.  I decided not to use flash from the outset, so I took long exposures on a tripod instead.

Each time I visited I was lucky enough to be there during music concerts.  The first was a wonderful Christmas Carols concert during the day, complete with organ and brass band. I wandered round the back of the altar, where I was all alone apart from the company of one of the two cats who live in the Cathedral.  This ginger one was taking a lovely nap on the kneelers, completely unbothered by the loud music!  On a previous occasion I found the other cat sleeping on a throne covered in velvet in the darkest recesses.

What an amazing place for a cat to live.  Parishioners bring them food, and they can always stroll outside for the delightful tidbits from Borough Market.

I was also there during the rehearsals for Handel’s Messiah, so had this wonderful accompaniment all day long.

The Vergers and Guides were very welcoming and friendly, only too happy to give me information and history lessons.

The light in the Cathedral changes dramatically throughout the day, so it’s possible to get a wide variety of pictures.

The photo above is another reflection taken through the grand piano.  The Cathedral is the Founders church for the school my two boys attend, so St Olave has his very own pew!

Many influential and famous people have been associated with the Cathedral, Mr Shakespeare can be seen here reclining in alabaster.

One day the Shard will be completed, but at the moment it’s still in progress and situated next to the Cathedral.

The second picture was taken using a long shutter speed, about 5 seconds and no flash.  I love the bokeh background, very blurred large circles and closer to the camera.  I also like the composition in this photo, but it lacks the highlights on the reindeer which the other one has.  I used a tripod for both pictures.

I pick holly every Christmas in remembrance of my Dad who died at Christmas 2004.  One of the last things he did on the day he died was to pick holly for my Mum…

Yes, it is snowing on my blog, and will be until Jan 4th.  This is a WordPress thing, not your failing eyesight!

Merry Christmas to all my friends!

All this was accompanied by real tea and a choice of teapot and cup.

Throughout the afternoon I listened to music by Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra.  The bookshop is eccentric, delightful, whimsical, arty, bohemian…  It sells books like this:

The selection includes beatnik, travel, jazz, literature and poetry and second hand books. Twentieth century works are a speciality, for example, Virginia Woolf, Isabel Allende, Pablo Neruda to name but a few.

The ambience is very relaxed, you could just sit on the sofa and chat, nobody would harass you or even expect you to buy anything!  The ‘wordiness’ obsession is everywhere…

Dennis, who owns the shop spends a lot of time renovating old furniture – he sands and paints the wood and adds literary references to the finished pieces.

Lucie runs various short courses on book making and also sells her own work.  In the evening the shop is often open until 11pm with live jazz or similar.  They have regular cultural evenings, talks, poetry readings, party events, even a reading group.  It is a place of comfort – very welcoming.  Indeed I felt that it was an afternoon of therapy, pampering and relaxation!

So I would urge anyone to ditch the family and escape to the Albion Beatnik Bookshop, 34 Walton Street, Jericho, Oxford.  Lucie’s work can be viewed at www.immaginacija.com

Seemingly endless workbooks to complete to go with the photographs.

I have also been working with a Medium Format Camera (MFC) at college, which is an old film camera, one that produces a much higher quality image than a standard film camera, which in turn produces a much better image than a digital camera.  This was an interesting experience.  I had forgotten how difficult it was to use a film camera, just not being able to get instant gratification by viewing the image immediately is strange.  It’s a large, cumbersome camera, no automatic metering or focusing, everything must be set manually.

The camera is held at waist level and you  look down into the eyepiece rather than straight ahead at the subject.  It makes a very satisfying ‘clunk’ when you press the shutter.  It’s also tricky to put the film in and take it out again.  Knowing that I had only 12 frames to shoot and that I couldn’t examine any of them made me very careful with my composition – no bad thing!  No opportunity to be ‘trigger happy’ here!  I used a black and white film to take studio portraits also, which I found very difficult with all the technical lighting, but I’m looking forward to seeing the results.  I haven’t processed the film yet, and it takes quite a long time to have this kind of film returned.  I can’t wait to see how they turn out, just hoping they’re not a complete disaster…  Who’d have thought that film photography was still alive and kicking!

When I look back at my blog, mostly on www.sparkyfizz.typepad.com I can see that a lot happens in a year.  Since then I’ve continued to pursue photography courses.  I’m currently studying for a BTEC in Photography, 3 full days a week, and the rest of the time spent doing homework and desperately trying to catch up and run my home and family!

This weekend I was helping my daughter prepare a ‘Vanitas’ (Dutch 17th century) still life image for her GCSE Art course.  Of course originally they were painted in oils with a little natural light.  We used a dark room and a little flash for ours.  This one was done relatively quickly, but I would love to spend some more time on the Vanitas images.

The whole point of this style of art was to prepare people for the fleeting time spent on earth.  Vanitas is a Latin word which translates as ‘emptiness’, and refers to the meaningless of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity.  Common symbols included skulls, to remind you of your certain death; rotten fruit, to symbolize decay; bubbles, to symbolize the brevity of life, smoke, to add to the atmosphere; watches and  hourglasses, time passing and musical instruments, indicating the ephemeral nature of life.  Flowers and butterflies can be interpreted in the same way.  A peeled lemon and seafood, was, like life, attractive to look at, but bitter to taste.  All a bit gloomy…

The Ashmolean in Oxford, has a room full of these paintings, fantastic to view, and, I think, good to recreate, but without the hell, damnation and misery perhaps.

I found myself in Victoria train station at the appointed time -

this woman bugled the Last Post…  Strange to see the whole of Victoria so still, the ant like behaviour ceased for those two minutes, and all the shops and trains fell silent.

This is one of the few things I request my children to observe each year.

When did Hallowe’en overtake Bonfire Night in popularity in the UK?  I think it’s been happening gradually since the mid 1990′s.  I remember when my eldest child was young, around that time, I found it difficult to find anything more than a mask for him to wear.  Now it seems to be a huge commercial venture which I don’t like much.  I’d never even heard of ‘trick or treat’ until I came to London as an adult.

So I’m all for preserving Bonfire Night as the dominant feast at this time of the year.  When I was little we used to buy fireworks ourselves in the shops with our spending money.  I’m not hearkening back to the good old days though, I remember many children used to be injured or killed each year.  But I miss the community spirit of Bonfire Night – collecting wood for the fire in your area, making the Guy, eating the tooth rotting bonfire toffee.

I took all these pictures using a handheld camera, so they’re blurry to say the least, but I quite like some of the effects.  They were all taken on 100 ISO, fireworks are very bright.  I used a small aperture to get a full depth of field – f11, and the shutter speed was 3 seconds with me holding my breath to keep as still as possible.  The husband and kids would have hated me setting up a tripod, so embarrassing!