Bees and Buildings

Over the Weekend

A Touch of Thailand in London

This years Thailand at Trafalgar Square was a one day festival of everything Thai from delicious food, drink, dancing and muay thai exibitions.

Elephants of the Parade

The Elephant Parade was started by the Elephant Family a charity based organization which raises awareness, and to save the Asian elephant from possible extintion.

Being London's biggest and most colourful outdoor event I took the chance to take a few snaps for myself.

Elephant Parade 2010

Elephant Family

City Hall, London

Tower Bridge, London

Wildlife Photographer of the Year

If you're planning a day out in London then may I suggest a visit to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition housed in the Natural History Museum. Alongside the winners, runner's-up and highly commended images is a slide show of previous years images with music and sounds that adds to the emotional effect while viewing the photographs. The tickets are pricey but it makes it all the worthwhile. Getting there early to beat the crowds is a good idea as the viewing area does get cramped and moving around the gallery gets a bit frustrating after a while. 

The Ten years and under exhibition is quite impressive especially the other junior presentations. To see that youngsters are able to take photographs of that standard is really remarkable. Choosing my favourite image out of the high calibre was not easy and after some thought I chose the highly commended Lone Lion by Britta Jaschinski.  The black and white image is far more 'arty' that the others in the same category giving the impression that the image was painted rather than photographed. 

This and That Again

Temple

The English headquarters of the Knights Templar leased inns or hostels to groups of lawyers needing somewhere to practice.

St Brides aka Printer's Church

Virginia Dare, the first english child born in America, whose parents were married here. It is said Virginia and her parents disappeared along with the other members of Raleigh's Lost Colony.

Sir Walter Raleigh was given a ten years to establish a settlement in North America by Queen Elizabeth I.

The Fourth Plinth

Sculptor Antony Gormley decided it was time to do something different using the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Click here to watch the sculptor tell you more about his idea.

Watch it live here

This and That

A selection of images from around London.

Monument

The Monument was built as a reminder of The Great Fire of London and is the tallest isolated stone column in the world. Standing at 62m high and 62m away from where the fire stared - at a baker's shop in Pudding Lane, on 2 September 1666. The fire destroyed four-fifths of the city.

St Paul's Cathedral

Performer at Trafalgar Square

Thames Barrier

The Thames Barrier was built between 1974 and 1982. The barrier's purpose is to prevent London from flooding during a freak high tide moving in from the sea caused by a storm surge.

These photos were taken on the north bank of the river.

The first HDR photo was tone mapped using five different exposures and the others were done using only three. The difference in overall tone and detail is evident.

The last photo had less shadow and highlight smoothing and the colour saturation was reduced.

More Watercolour

City Hall in Watercolour

The photoshop watercolour effect is just awesome and I can't get enough of it.

N.B. The enlarged view is not the original file size and will look pixelated.