Wet and wild weekend

Another crazy London weekend for Simon Bills of simonbills.com fame. Friday night saw a Movember house party at our Old St flat where my flat mate Dave was awarded Mo of the match by myself. A magnum of MOet was presented (or maybe it was just a magnum of Waitrose champagne, either way it was pretty tasty from what I remember) and much frivolity was enjoyed.

Mo of the Match from Simon Bills on Vimeo.

Saturday night was the farewell party for my Old Street Photography running mate Danny, he's heading back to Adelaide tomorrow with his wife Bec to see what life has in store for them there. I'll be following suit in the not too distant future too so stay tuned for details. We've agreed to disband Old Street Photography and branch out as individuals with our photography, soon enough there'll be 2 new players in the Adelaide wedding photography circuit so look out!!

I woke up exhasted this morning, never good, but the exhastion was replaced with excitement when I rememberd I was having brunch with Nej! Nej grew up 2 doors up the road from me and a ridiculously large portion of my childhood was spend with him playing basketball, or cricket, or table tennis, or kicking the footy, or swimming, or playing Tomb Raider or just chilling doing whatever, he lives up in Aberdeen these days but was down for the weekend to watch the Masters tennis so it was great to catch up over the biggest fry up I've ever seen.

So, one might imagine that after all this all I wanted to do was have a lie down, and I did want to, but for some reason I decided to head out and play with the video function on my Canon 5D2. Problem being it was absolutely bucketing with rain. I headed down to St Pauls and managed to get a few breaks in the weather before the following happened:

- the rain really started coming down hard
- I accidently walked through a massive puddle and soaked my shoes right through
- I cracked the shits and went to the get the bus home
- I waited 20 minutes at the shelter-less stop and stood unprotected in the pouring rain before the 76 finally arrived
- I rode the bus home for 20 minutes and got off to clear skies

Anyway, I've whipped the footage I took into the following video but it's very much a work in progress.



I'll be back.

Best "Movember - Man on the Street" video EVER

On Sunday my flatmate Gerhard and I headed out to Camden to do something quite unusual. As Danny put it, this really took some "stones".

The stones were actually all Gerhard's to be fair, I was more in the background, but it sure was fun. You see, Gerhard is taking part in Movember this year which involves growing a Mo (or a 'tache as they call them in the UK) for the month of November to raise money and aweness for prostate cancer and men's health issues generally. After 3 weeks of abuse regarding the almost invisible mo Gerhard decided to take it to the streets and see what the general public thought. Take a look to see what the verdict was.

Movember Man on the Street from Dave Gerhard on Vimeo.

For the camera heads out there I was doing the recording on my 5D mkII, first time I'd really used the video function, focussing was a bit tricky but there's loads of potential and HD quality is off the hook.

If you've been inspired by Gerhard's stones or his mustache growing ablilties then I know he'd love your support, you can donate to his charity of choice here.

Engagement Shoot - Leona and Josh

Yesterday I was under the pump.

Most people I shoot have a passing interest in photography at best, they know what they like but don't know their f stops from their ISO - which is brilliant! You see, when people aren't heavily into something they're easier to impress, a nice bokeh (blurry creamy dreamy background) and a smiling face is generally all it takes (FYI I don't just settle for mediocre when I shoot in case you thought I was just phoning it in!). Yesterday was a different kettle of fish, Josh is very keen photographer, and his fiance Leona is a full time working pro! No pressure Simon!! The flipside is that Josh is one of my best mates, and Leona is one of the happiest least judgmental people going around, and together they have so much energy and chemistry and fun that it's super easy to get great shots. Still though, I was under the pump.















If you want to see the full selection head on over to my under contrcution photography website and check out the slideshow and page I've set up. I'm pretty chuffed with it but would LOVE to hear what y'all think.

Awesome.

Eye of the beholder

Over the years I've taken a lot of photos of the London Eye. 2 of my previous day jobs were within a short walk of the eye, and while I was learning the ropes of photography this was a favourite subject. Apologies for the varying sizes below, don't have the time to standardise the size so bear with me!

2006





2007



2008





2009







But after all these shots over all these I'd never actually been up the Eye. That is, until now. Last weekend we had some unseasonal clear weather and the decision was made early Saturday morning to break the drought. THe light was good, the skies were clear apart from some nice fluffy clouds and conditions were perfect. I think my favourite shot of the day had nothing to do with the Eye though.











Good times.

Hecticity

Hecticity - look it up, it's a word. And if wasn't 20 seconds ago then it is now (welcome anyone who found this page by googling hecticity, I like your style). This word basically sums up my life at the moment, ie, my life is a state of high hecticity.

Far be it from me to make excuses, but my tardiness in updating my blog is due to the aforementioned condition. Just a quick summary of my last few weeks starting as far back as my memory will go:
Thursday: Rigorous sporting contest followed by birthday drinks and the last train home
Friday: Welcome night in, tasty dinner followed by my favourite movie of all time on the couch, The Big Lewbowski. (okay, so this isn't making my life sound tooooo hectic)
Saturday: Trip on the London Eye (stay tuned for this blog, some KILLER shots even if I do say so myself) and walking round London followed by a trip to Essex for dinner and a sleep over
Sunday: Trip back from Essex followed by drinks, karaoke and a very late dinner with friends
Monday: Finished the last of my wedding photo editing, homecooked meal and a sensational bottle of Italian wine that needed to be drunk
Tuesday: Something so hectic I can't even remember it 3 days later
Wednesday: Dinner and drinks with friends at a fantastic restaurant on the Thames (followed by nightmares of being attacked by restless farm animals after eating so much steak)
Thursday: Sleeping Beauty ballet at the Royal Opera House - apparently it's cool for Prime Charming to kiss unconcious girls, but suddently it becomes a police matter when I try it at a party?
Friday (today): Rogue wine club (mmmmmmmm)
Saturday: Leaving party dinner and drinks
Sunday: Pub lunch followed by photo taking round London and possibly karaoke again?
Monday: Dinner some place nice
Tuesday: Emotional airport farewell and REST

On top of that I've actaully been fronting up to my day job as well, so as you can see I've had precious little opportunity to blog it up, and it'll probably be a little while before the next installment.

What I'm trying to say is stay tuned, I've not forgotten about you, I still love you, my weekly updates will resume once my life returns to a normal level of hecticity.

Simon

Getting away from it all

London life can get you down. Super fast paced, overcrowded, too much pollution, too many people who think it's acceptable to do a poo on your doorstep on a Saturday night (seriously, don't get me started, that's 2 weeks out of 3 now - the downside to living in gritty East London I guess). Sometimes you just have to get away from it all.

Yvonne and I had been planning a trip to Turkey for a while, but when I say "planning" I actually mean "not planning". There was much talk of the trip, but due to the aforementioned super fast paced life we'd not booked flights or accommodation, or even considered where we might go and we were due to leave in under a week. Turkey deserves better than that, so the decision was made to hire a car and explore some of the English countryside instead, a decision which turned out to be a good one.

We had the car in London for one night before heading off so I did something I've been wanting to do for a while, I rigged up a tripod in the passenger seat and fired off some long exposure shots of me behind the wheel. There's plenty of info online about how to do this, but in a nutshell here are the settings I used for the shot below. f/22, ISO1600, 4 seconds exposure. Not sure if this is how the rest of the world does it, and I'm sure with a little experimentation I could do a better job, but I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.



Next stop was the Three Choirs Vineyard near Gloucester, about 3 hours out of London. Yeah, that's right, England has vineyards! Who knew? The place was stunning, beautiful rooms with beautiful views of beautiful vines.



A little wine tasting seemed to be in order. At first I thought a whacky chef was playing a pre-halloween prank by substiting one of the wines for vinegar, sadly this wasn't the case, but it actually didn't matter at all. Strange as it might sound the wine was the last reason we went there, I mean with France, Spain and Italy on your doorstep there's never a shortage of great wine over here (sidenote - I picked up a bottle of Vevue Clicquot for £25 at the supermarket yesterday, same bottle goes for $80+ in Australia), we went to Three Choirs for the early morning strolls in crisp fresh air through rows of vines whose leaves have just turned with the seasons, we went to see cows and sheep going about thier business, and we went because we considered it highly unlikely anyone would do a poo on our door step. Oh, and the photo ops weren't bad either.





Next up was a trip to Chepstow Castle just over the border in Wales. In my relentless pursuit to see more things you'll never see in Australia (Kryall Castle doesn't count) I actually forgot that I'd been to this castle before. Oops. Not to worry, it's always great poking round an ancient structure, an a Tuesday night on the verge of winter meant the crowds were down. I love the light streaming in through the windows of castles, especially on a gorgeous girl!





Cream tea later that day followed by Bath the following day and a trip to Stonehenge on the way home rounded out a world class short break. Londoners, heed my advice and get out of town of a few days, sure, the stress of London will come right back the second you try to negitiate London traffic on your return, but a few days out of the big smoke is just magic.