Blog
A blog about photography and travel.
Work trip to England
Work trip to England and a short weekend in London.
At the end of August I joined a customer workshop in Colchester, followed by a very short weekend in London.
Colchester, despite supposedly being the oldest town in England, is fairly unremarkable if I should be honest. For travel nerds driving on the “wrong” side of the road, it does though have an interesting/hilarious/scary feature in the magic roundabout. which I drove through. Need to bring a drone next time to photograph it. Stay tuned.
London, however, did not disappoint. So much life, and so many interesting places, it really is a photographer’s paradise. I’ve been going there for a couple of times a year for a very long time, and it’s impressive to see how the city keeps changing all the time. Need to plan the next trip soon.
Highgate Cemetery
Discovery of a magical place in London
After having visited London countless times, and having explored the city extensively, I was amazed to discover a new location: Highgate Cemetery. I learned of its existence from the newest Cormoran Strike audio book, where the cemetery features heavily.
Not only is the cemetery extraordinary, but I happened to go there on a frozen and foggy Sunday morning, with every frozen strand of cobweb highlighted. The atmosphere was magical. I even met a fox, which posed just long enough for me to take a photo.
Otherwise I have to say that London was not at its best, so the trip was pretty dull in terms of photography. But I did spot, and take a snap of, a Zelensky lookalike!
This was the first outing with my new Fujifilm XT5, which I really like.
Easter in London
First trip in over two years that feels like normal
For Easter I visited London, one of my favorite cities, for the first time in almost three years. London is safe, walkable and has great public transport. It’s also dripping with history and sights, and has a relaxed multi-cultural vibe. To get there from Iceland is only a short flight and, although the Icelandic and English cultures are quite different, they are also compatible in the sense that we don’t take ourselves very seriously - which is a happy place to be, in my view.
It was quite a long trip so I was exhausted when I got back. In addition to walking the length and breadth of London, I also visited Southend-On-Sea, Brighton and Southampton. I have a soft spot for Brighton but Southampton I never need to visit again. Southend-On-Sea is only remarkable for it’s 2km long pier, which is actually well worth a visit.
I brought the Fujifilm XE4 along with the XF16-55, XF23f1.4 and XF50-140. Also, I had a brand new iPhone 13 Pro Max which takes decent photos. Nothing like a real camera though. The jpegs are over-sharpened and HDR-d, which I can probably fix but can’t be bothered to.
I wish there was proper support for Galleries in blog posts on this web-site - but there’s not. Image titles are especially bad. So here’s a catalog:
Image 1: Businessman at the Southbank
Image 2: @London Bridge station
Image 3: @River Thames
Images 4-8: Southend-on-Sea
Image 9: Earl’s Court station
Image 10: Seven Dials
Images 11-16: Hyde Park
Images 17-19: Kew Gardens
Image 20: Oxford Street
Image 21: Brighton
Image 22: Near Waterloo station
Images 23-24: Hi-jacking a photoshoot near Westminster
Images 25-26: @Parliament Square
Image 27: Beer-time at Brewdog Tower Hill
Image 28: A green-ish Rolls in front the new American Embassy. Had seen the exact same car at Tower Hill a few days earlier.
