Some more random photos...

Just a few random shots taken recently... First one is of an Indian (?) religious precession that went straight past my flat, and the second is of a merry-go-round at Southbank, right near the London Eye.

Apologies...

Once again as the title so adequately states... "I am sorry I haven't put any effort into my blog of late." I can happily say now though that I've got 5 - 6 weeks left at work MAXXXX! I shall then be off to the Greek Islands for a week, spending time in Mykonos, Ios and Santorini. I'm then off the Athens for a few days and then off to Rome. I'll spend 2-3 days here and then off to Tuscany to spend some time in Florence and Pisa, and then finally off to Venice for 3 days to finish off my Italian adventure. I'm then back to London for one night, and then off to Egypt for 9 glorious days, taking in all that is Egypt whilst floating down the Nile on the Felluca. Then I'm back to London again for a few days (travel plans pending...) and then I'm off to Phuket to stay with Dad for ??? ....

So... to cut a long story short, this blog should kick it into high gear in the next few months. But in the meantime, here are a couple of measly photos from a recent trip into central...

Bulgaria

Firstly, sorry for the extreme delay in getting around to blogging my trip to Bulgaria. My excuse; I WAS ON HOLIDAYS!!

As most of you know, from the 7th-14th March I was lucky enough to travel to Bulgaria, a little place known as Borovets. I can’t say that Bulgaria was ever high on my places-to-go list, so I had no real expectations. We didn’t get to see much of the place when we arrived as it was around 10pm once we finally got to our hotel. The only thing that we did notice was that our hotel’s entrance was at the base of one of the ski runs, so if you were adventurous enough you could have boarded right through the main entrance.

Now before I get into our snowboarding escapades, I would like to talk to you about the hotel we stayed in. Put your hands up if you have ever stayed in a hotel where you could purchase any of the following items:

• tear gas
• ninja stars
• taser guns
• air rifles
• swords
• brass knuckles
• brass knuckles with an in-built taser

Now I’m guessing nobody has their hand up. This was really freaky, I’ve never seen anything like it before... That was the first time I really felt like I was in Eastern Europe.

Now I hadn’t snowboarded in over 6 years so I was expecting my skills to be poor at best. Thankfully it’s like riding a bike – by no time I was linking turns again and pulling major speed. I managed to rally the troops to head up the top of the mountain for some ‘real’ boarding. Now, neither Hugh or Colm had ever boarded before so they were a little hesitant. Thankfully they were both impressionable and jumped on the gondola with me. All was well, UNTIL we were all surrounded by clouds and visibility was less than a few metres. This pretty much freaked us all out as the last thing we want to do was to board off the side of a mountain. Long story short, we managed to make it down with only one major crash (Hugh’s crash that is).

The second day was amazing. Not a cloud in the sky and was decidedly warm (compared to the -5 the day before that is). However after much thought, we figured that this was a bad thing as the snow was starting to get fairly slushy. We spent most of the day right up the top of Borovets (around 2600m) cruising around checking out all of the new runs we didn’t even see the previous day.

Day three: We awoke to blizzard-like conditions... completely opposite to the day before. A huge amount of snow was dumped over night and throughout the day. So much so that the gondola was closed and only the lower runs were accessible. It was a mad rush to get up as soon as we could as there was power everywhere. Unfortunately everyone had the same idea, and within a few hours the queues for the chairlifts were huge. Even with the delays, it was a very enjoyable day. Once we had finished shredding all day we pulled ourselves away from the ski runs and heading straight to Mo’s Bar to watch the Liverpool Vs Real Madrid match. As a few of us were Liverpool fans, the 4-0 victory was well received... probably a little ‘to’ well received as we all got fairly intoxicated (mainly due to the extremely cheap drinks). It worked out that we all had had a stupid amount of alcohol (at a guess at least 15 or so vodkas, beers, G&Ts), only costing up about £20 a head. We left the bar at god knows what time, and ended up doing what drunk boys do; tackling each other and trying to rough each other up. Me being the stupidest out of us all decided to escalate the game and introduced fire extinguishers into the mix. I found near the lifts and quickly doused Hugh, which was a major laugh. Then once we got to our floor I came across another one and doused him again. When I turned around to put it back I was met by about 12-15 hotel security and police and promptly thrown back into the lift. Now when I saw thrown, I really do mean thrown - I have the scar on my hip to prove it. By this stage I was nearly crapping my pants; I had no idea what I was in for. Thankfully I was only escorted to the front desk and made to pay a fine of 50 lev (around £25).

Day four: After waking up with a fierce hangover, I decided the best medicine was to get out on the slopes immediately. So I skipped breakfast and headed straight out with Hugh (Colm was in bed nursing a major hangover and sore ribcage). The gondola was open so be went straight to the top and found mountains and mountains of fresh power from the previous days downpour. I’m not joking when I say this, but on one of my runs down I went off the run a bit to do some powder carving only to be met with waist-deep snow. I got completely bogged and was an absolute mission to get back to the main ski run. This was the theme for the day... epic amounts of powder and some very very funny crashes, none of which hurt due to the soft snow. This was by far the best day of the whole trip.

The remaining days were just as much fun... mainly due to the fact of Hugh and Colm’s boarding ability was improving by the hour. By the end of the week we were hooking down black runs at high speed. We left Borovets all very happy and proud of the fact that we boarded as much as we could, and pushed ourselves as far as we could – namely Colm who after X-Rays back in Dublin found out he boarded 2 full days with a cracked rib. Now that’s dedication! SO all in all, if anyone is considering a cheapish ski holiday, with good food, cheap booze and great snow – I thoroughly recommend Bulgaria.

Next stop.... Austria

London's Freeze

You have all probably seen on the news that London had an epic snow storm on 1-2 February 2009. I've never seen anything like it. Mind you, I've never lived in a snowy environment before, but this is London! 15-20 hours of constant snow resulted in the whole of London shutting down. Unfortunately as I'm a freelance consultant, if I don't work I don't get paid. However, I couldn't resist having a bit of a play in the snow on my lunch hour; managed to snap off a few photos too:

Here what the rest of Europe and the world had to say about London's inability to deal with the weather.

Tower Hill shots taken at blue hour

Hi All!! Just a quick post to upload some of my latest photos. These were taken tonight at Tower Bridge (DUHHH!!). Was absolutely freezing might I add; my hands were frozen solid! I've been experimenting with digital blending and dynamic range increase (DRI) photos and processing, and these are my first attempts. I am fairly happy with the outcome, and hopefully there should be more in the coming weeks. Please note: the sky was that colour... all the blending was performed on the water, and aspects of the bridge to increase the sharpness! I promise!!!

Few more photos

I went for another photo mission yesterday/last night and took the following photos. Have been playing around with long exposure shots, one of which can be seen in the sunset shot of the London Eye and River Thames below. This photo was taken with a 8 second exposure; I tried for a longer exposure (20-30secs), but the lights on the bridge blew out the shot too mich and the mass amounts of people and trains on the Golden Jubilee bridge causes to many jitters. My Gorillapod didn't quite meet the challenge as there was nothing really to grip on (without running the risk of losing my camera into the river). HOWEVER, I am receiving my new Carbon-Fibre pro tripod in the mail tomorrow, can't wait to give it a run. So stay tuned...

Merry XMAS!!!

First off I would like to wish all of you out there a very Merry Christmas, and an exceedingly enjoyable New Years. I would like to thank you all for taking an interest in my blog (or lack thereof) and true to form I would like to apologise for being so slack. But as you can all imagine, this is a very busy time of year work-wise and as such I haven't had much of a chance to do anything but... So to try and make it up I've added a few photos from in and around London, that I've taken over the past few weeks as a way of saying sorry. It's not much, but at least it's something...