This morning started as usual: breakfast in the hotel, then out to do some shooting. I wondered over to Long Acre in Covent Garden, where we were going to have our first class for the workshop.

While shooting on Sunday with Steve and Edmond, we got some real time instruction: why are you looking at that? How is your camera set? What do you want the final image to look like? But this morning was an actual, sit-down classroom class. Not a lecture, but even more interesting: looking at a selection of the pictures we took the prior day (1) and going over what made them good, or not so good, and how they might be improved.

The other two attendees, Philip and Q, were both very nervous about this process and had repeatedly expressed that they thought the images they had taken were lousy (2). I’ve been through this many times, including twice before with Steve, and was comfortable with both the process and my images. You saw my shots from the weekend in my prior blog posts.

I also expected that some of the images from the others would turn out interesting – in all of the workshops I’ve attended, I’ve always been impressed with at least some of the work from all the others. And I was not surprised today.

And Steve did what he always does – give constructive criticism on how the images could be improved (or not), and how the camera settings might be adjusted for better results. Interesting as always.

The afternoon was a bit of a mess. The plan was to take the tube to a photojournalism exhibit of competition winners, then grab some lunch and head to Canary Wharf for more shooting. Unfortunately the trip to the exhibit in Stratford took almost double the time we expected, and then it was decided to stop at a museum that happened to be a few minutes walk from the exhibit.

The museum was a weird place: a giant (nice) warehouse with more than 100,000 artifacts from the Victoria and Albert Museum that they didn’t have room to exhibit. So they put them in this IKEA-like space with no explanation of what each item was. It was a nice building, and the transparent floor was interesting, but I frankly didn’t get the point. After all, these were items which were not good enough to display – but they were on display. Way out of town in Stratford. Only you couldn’t know anything about them (3).

By the time that finished we were all hungry and so we stopped for lunch. Which was relaxing, but also took longer than expected. The only saving grace was that we figured out we could take an Uber to Canary Wharf for $30 – which was uniformly agreed to and got us there in 16 minutes.

Frankly, I wasn’t expecting much from Canary Wharf. It’s basically an office park filled with gigantic office towers. There are also residential buildings, and at least one big hotel that I saw. Lots of financial types work there. But I was surprised and we had more material to work with than I expected.

First off was a covered walkway connecting the office space with the tube station. Rainbow colored, it had translucent panels and the light inside the walkway was interesting.

The second thing I found interesting (YMMV) was the low afternoon light creating shadows as people left work for the day. While I was taking these shots, a couple of security guards questioned me as to what I was doing. So of course, I include here a picture of them as they were walking away, having satisfied themselves that I posed no threat to public safety (4).

At this point, we headed back to the city. We all split up; I headed back towards SoHo to see what I could find. There were a few nice images; nothing earth shattering but I like them. Just people enjoying the weather, being with someone they like, waiting for their date. Or doing that English favorite, drinking on the sidewalk outside the pub,

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(1) Since some of us started shooting Saturday, we actually reviewed both Saturday and Sunday images.

(2) The final attendee, Alain, is still MIA and reportedly sick. A pretty lousy way to spend a trip you bought and paid for, including the tuition.

(3) There were apparently loose-leaf binders you could carry around with some info on some of the items. I didn’t bother.

(4) It was a fruitful day for being challenged about taking pictures. A woman asked me in the tube station whether I was taking her picture; I hadn’t even noticed her, nor pointed a camera in her direction. And a different security dude questioned while while I was taking the picture “Captivated by Color”, show above.