Friday was our last full day of the workshop. We’ll have a final class tomorrow morning to review today’s work and also create a summary of our best work for the week. But after that I’ll be officially on my own until I fly home Sunday.

I’ve settled into a regular routine each evening and morning. I return to the room after dinner and any evening shooting that I did and begin the daily photo editing. This consists of three steps:

• Copying all of the images from the memory card in my camera to my iPad, and then from the iPad to a small external SSD drive for a backup.
• Importing all of those files into Lightroom, the program I use on my iPad and the Mac in my office, where I can select the ones I like best and make them look a little better through magic.
• Sending the set of selected images to Steve for him to review and use in the next day’s class.

This typically takes an hour or two. I might have anywhere from 300 to 1,000 images to sort through, and select 25-50 for further processing.

After breakfast in the hotel dining room (1), I come back up to my room to write this blog. This takes an hour or so. Writing the blog requires selecting the images that tell the story, further editing to fit the blog, constructing the collages, and of course the writing itself. This may all sound very tedious, but I enjoy it.

After the blogging is mostly done I head out to class. The location is only five minutes from my hotel, so depending on exactly when I leave I have lots of time to wander around the area and see if there are any picture opportunities. Yesterday I got quite a few decent shots. People heading to work, empty stores, shopkeepers setting up for the day or waiting for the customers to arrive.

We had two visits on the agenda. The first was the Borough Market, a sprawling food market which dates back to the twelfth century, although most of the current buildings were built starting in the mid-nineteenth century. The market is located on the South Bank of the Thames and far enough away that another ride on the tube was necessary. I wrote earlier about our Oyster cards, which are pre-paid weekly passes for all mass transit in London. So these trips are reasonably painless (2).

The Market was extremely crowded, as much of London is these days. And the weather has progressively warmed up this week, reaching about 90F on Friday. This temperature is hot in the US, but is brutal hee where many homes don’t have A/C. The Market itself is covered but open air, and the heat is compounded by the crowds and all of the hot food preparation going on. I don’t know what the temperature reached inside, but it was oppressive.

There are two ways to get pictures of people on the street. The most direct way is to simply ask them if you can take their picture. Most people, including me, find it difficult to walk up to a stranger and ask to take their picture; they’re afraid of rejection or of the person acting very negatively towards them. However, whenever I get the courage to do this, I find that almost all people are fine with it.

The other way is to try and find opportunities to see people in interesting situations, or poses, etc. and take the picture without asking. Again, it can be anxiety producing – will they be angry if they “catch” you? My experience is that most of the time it’s no problem. If someone objects, I’ll either not take the picture or even delete it. It’s just a picture and not worth annoying someone.

After we were all exhausted by the heat and crowds, we left the Market and stopped for a hydration break. Then we walked about 15 minutes to the Tate Modern Museum, our last official photo stop. I didn’t take a lot of pictures there, because I don’t usually like to take pictures of art. It seems that the artistry would be in the original work, and not my photograph of it. But I did find a few images of people that worked for me.

On the way out of the museum, I came across this image.

We ended the day by stopping for a drink at a riverside bar, and then heading to Chinatown for a long dinner and conversation with friends I probably won’t see again soon, if ever.

(1) They have a very nice buffet breakfast, along with a la carte options, all included in a single supplement to the room rate. It’s surprisingly well priced when I compare to the breakfast places around this area.

(2) Except for the crowded trains, the lack of A/C in many of them, the long walks between train lines, etc. But I jest – I found the tube a convenient way to get around reasonably efficiently.

(3) The woman upper right image asked me to send her a copy of the picture, which of course I did last night.

Thursday got off to a shaky start. I always go out to walk around and shoot before class, then head over to the class venue (1) for the 10:00 start. I carefully timed my start and walking route to arrive just before 10, but I started getting texts telling me would be delayed. First 15 minutes, then 30. When I got there at 10:30 I found that the problem is the A/V setup we depend on was not working. It was 11:00 before we had a partial workaround in place, which sufficed for the now-abbreviated meeting.

I haven’t really written much about it but we’ve been taking a lot of rides on the tube this week to get to our shooting destinations, with Edmond as our guide. The London tube system (or subway) is complex but efficient when it’s working well. We all have weekly fare passes, which makes the process a bit smoother, although (like the NYC subway now) you can simply swipe your credit card or phone at the turnstile.

Our first stop was an outer part of London known as Little Venice. I was unaware of its existence. There are some canals which feed eventually feed into the Thames; this portion is populated by river boats, floating restaurants, houseboats, etc. It’s very pretty and very quiet, making a sharp contrast to the inner city we’ve spent most of our time in.

After spending some quiet time in this area, we were back on the tube heading to our next stop. The tube station here was part of Paddington (2) Station, which is a major inter-city railroad station. The rail station is above ground, it huge, and has some very interesting architecture. It’s also filled with people coming and going from all over Great Britain. We decided to take 30 minutes to shoot in the station itself.

Our tube ride to Camden was crowded and the train was very warm. The weather has been warming up all week, and it reached the mid-80s today. Everyone on the train looked tired and overheated as we headed to Camden Market.

Camden Market has evolved over the years from a random collection of small shops, food stalls and the like to a 16 acre site mostly owned by a private investor. But it still has the appearance of a disorderly and ad-hoc area. It seems to be frequented largely by young people – teens and young adults – who flock to the restaurants, clothing stores, tattoo parlors, street vendors and the like. The vibe is definitely “punk” – lots of face jewelry, torn clothing, leather, tattoos, etc. It’s hard to believe that it’s actually a corporate venture at this point.

Our last stop for the day (or night; it was dinner time by now) was Brick Lane. This is a street which an endless array of Indian and other south Asian restaurants side by side. We had a decent meal jammed into a crowded table in a crowded restaurant (“Aladan”). But the real interesting part of this stop was the walk we took down the road after dinner to view the wall-to-wall graffiti covering a few blocks. We also found some interesting people there: some couples enjoying the warm evening, friends sitting by their motorbike, and faces in windows. I’ll leave you with a few images.

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(1) Our classes are held at the FujiFilm House of Photography in Covent Garden. Fuji is a minor camera maker with a devoted following, and our second instructor Edmond is a brand “Ambassador” which allows him access to the meeting room there at no cost.

(2) Yes, that Paddington. There are little blue bears all over the area.

The class space is less than five minutes from my hotel, so I leave well ahead of time and make an early photo shoot. This gives me the chance to catch the morning commuters and see the streets before the tourist hordes arrive. Some are out having breakfast, shopkeepers are taking a break while they prepare and waiting for the first customers to arrive.

After another successful morning class, we went out to shoot around Chinatown and Leicester Square. We all had walked around this area several times this week, but Edmond (especially) emphasized the benefits from revisiting areas that are familiar. In this case, only a little familiar; several hours over a couple of days doesn’t mean I know this like I know, for instance, midtown Manhattan. But I’m starting to get a feeling for the rhythm and flows in the area, I’m recognizing some of the shops and restaurants, and I’m getting a sense for what kind of photo opportunities might exist.

Some street photography purists insist that you should only take and use pictures that are completely “authentic”: the subjects are unaware of you, and you’re getting them doing whatever they do. I’m not from that school, although I take lots of images like that. I also like the shots where the people become aware, and usually are happy to be part of your picture. Of course, sometimes people don’t want their picture taken, and I always respect that.

When I first noticed the two women in the first picture, they were holding the popcorn bags over their faces. I thought it looked cute, so I took the picture. It was only later when editing the picture did I notice that they were giving me a signal expressing their displeasure. Oh well.

The group met up after lunch and we took the tube over towards Westminster, where we walked across the bridge to the South Bank. The tube station had been reworked and had some absolutely gorgeous industrial architecture.

I knew that we were going to be walking past Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, but I wasn’t particularly interested in photographing them. Until I saw the sun just peeking over the tip of Big Ben, and I couldn’t resist getting the sunstar.

Although today was Wednesday, it seemed much more crowded than it had been on Sunday, when I was in this area also.

Along the promenade on the south side of the Thames is a seemingly endless wall that’s been turned into a Covid memorial. Volunteers painted hearts across the length of the wall and encouraged those who lost someone to write a brief message in the hearts. The volunteers try and maintain the memorial by overwriting the messages as they fade.

We walked along the promenade, past some restaurants, the London Eye Ferris wheel, and a skate park. By then everyone was tired, and several of the group had evening plans. So we split up, and Edmond & I went to grab some dinner and a beer.

This morning started as usual, with a review of the prior day’s images from each of us. Happily, Alain was feeling well enough to join us, although this wasn’t to last: he went back to his hotel around noon to continue his recovery.

At both the morning session and then continuing during lunch, Edmond spoke at length about how light determines the image. Which of course is obvious, as the very word “photograph” means “light writing”. But he meant it in a very specific way, which I hope you will see in the images below.

When I leaned that we were going to the V&A Museum, I was disappointed. I’m not a fan of taking pictures of artwork, at least not for any purpose than remembering what you saw. But our visit was not about the art at all – it was utilizing the way the light enters through skylights and huge windows to create the opportunities Edmond was speaking about. Here’s an example:

While that image has been edited a little to emphasize the boy, the opportunity arose because he was the only one in the crowd that was bathed by that pool of light coming in from the sidewalk grate above.

The light in the museum was indeed interesting, and there were thousands of people there to try and position for a pleasing image. Among them were a group of art students sketching some of the sculptures – they were also trying to capture the way the light modeled the figures.

I took a break from this and went outside to call back home, and noticed a new-ish addition to the museum that had a very modern design, in contract to the 19th century architecture of the main building.

Obviously, these were not part of the day’s assignment. But I liked the way they came out.

As a bonus, there is a permanent photography exhibit in two large halls on the fourth floor of the museum which we went to visit. One of the halls in dedicated to Elton John and David Furnish; Elton donated his extensive collection of photographs to the museum a few years ago. The exhibit was American photographs; it was seriously excellent and worth the time we spent there. The image above, by a famous photojournalist who went by the name Weegee was a page 1 photo of a fire that was taken with very primitive equipment in 1943.

Late in the afternoon we headed down to Kensington and walk around the Harrod’s neighborhood. Again, I tried to find subjects that were made possible by the differences in how light played over the frame. I found it extremely difficult to get images with even a little artistic merit that captured this concept. But I did manage a few.

By this time we were all exhausted. Alain had bailed at noon; Q left us around 6:00 as she had a theater ticket. The four remaining went for a dinner, as much to have a place to sit as to eat. But the meal and conversation were enjoyable.

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,

(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.

In case you missed it, the reason I’m here in London is for a photography workshop. A week of nothing but photography, with some cultural enhancements like last night’s blues show mixed in. After a good night’s sleep, I went out late in the morning for some shooting, and then met with my fellow participants and instructors at 1:00pm.

We are a very diverse group. Steve, the organizer of the workshop whom I’ve worked with before is a Canadian living in NY. He is a very accomplished photojournalist, documentarian and has published five books of his work. Edmond, the other instructor, has also worked as a photojournalist, produced films and received many awards for his work. He was born in Iran, but has lived in the UK since the age of 8.

There are three other workshop participants along with me. Philip, Q and Alain. All live in the US. Philip was here since Friday night, while Q (a woman) arrived this morning and is still seriously jet lagged. Alain is in town, but was sick today. So we had an excellent student/instructor ratio today: 3:2. But there was only a little “instruction” today, mostly organizational and scheduling issues.

I started my shooting today (1) by taking a walk (2) across the Thames to the South Bank, and area I had never really explored before. The part right over the Waterloo Bridge is fairly commercial, with some modern office building and the Waterloo Train Station.

But after walking for a while we found a nice street with some interesting people and older building and shops.

Later we met back with the group in Covent Garden, and then it began to pour. We and everyone looked for a place to hide from the rain, which meant that thousands had to crowd under eaves and into shops. We hung out for a while in a clothing store, then sought shelter under an arcade.

We watched as people scurried by, but were captivated by a small boy who had the best idea and made a game out of the puddles.

I finished the day’s shoot by capturing some of the characters in and around the Covent Garden area.

Then we went for dinner, and headed back to our respective hotels.

(1) After the excitement of yesterday’s Pride Day parade and celebration, I’m afraid today is going to be much less exciting.

(2) Philip joined me for this.