The Great Fire of (East) London

I've been really bad lately - only one post in November, and now here we are almost a third of the way through December! I have some catching up to do.

Well actually that's not really true - for some reason I haven't been taking many photos recently so there's not much to catch up on. Various things have been getting in the way - busy at work, busy at home, it's dark now when I leave the house in the morning and when I get back at night, I've been doing some extra curricular work designing a website and when I have had some free time I've been playing Crysis.

Even the photos I did take last month went untouched until today when I finally got around to downloading them onto my PC and playing around with them ... Back in the middle of November there was a large fire in the East of London on the site of a future Olympics venue. From our office we had an amazing view of the huge plume of smoke and could see the flames when they were at their highest.

So, even though they are four weeks late and this isn't news any more, here are a couple of those photos. In the first one I like the way the smoke takes the shape of a dolphin jumping from the ground, and the fact there is a plane that seems to be flying straight for it. The second has been messed with a little to make the plume more ominous.

 

Sony DSC-T200

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

A while back I had a little rant about the additional charges applied to ticket prices when buying from somewhere like Ticketmaster. Well, the event for which the tickets were purchased finally arrived this week - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at Somerset House.

For some reason I neglected to put a reminder in my diary and I almost forgot about it. Fortunately I was reminded in time. We were (again) pretty fortunate with the weather - Somerset House is an outdoor venue - and we had a perfect evening with not a cloud in the sky. The gig was amazing - an hour and a half of all BRMC's best tracks.

As seems to be happening more often these days, I didn't have my camera with me, so had to make do with the Nokia N73. It did surprisingly well considering it was dark.

 

Donnington Moto GP - Casey Stoner

My personal favourite photo from the Donnington Moto GP last weekend - Casey Stoner navigates the Esses at the Donnington circuit at the British Moto GP. I think this is my favourite because of the line that starts in the bottom left and leads the eye across, up, back and across to the biker in the top right - even though he didn't follow that line, you can almost feel that it was the line that he took to get where he is.

Nikon 80-400 VR at 400mm, 1/640sec, f/10

Donnington Moto GP - Capirossi, Barros, Pedrosa

Another battle for position from last weekend's Moto GP, at least during the first few laps, was seen between Loris Capirossi (number 65), Alex Barros (4) and Dani Pedrosa. The photos below show just how close they were. Unfortunately Capirossi slid out due to the wet conditions, leaving Barros and Pedrosa to finish seventh and eighth.

  

Nikon 80-400 VR
280mm, 1/1000sec, f/9                 400mm, 1/640sec, f/9                 400mm, 1/640sec, f/9

Donnington Moto GP - Valentino Rossi

Valentino Rossi started the Donnington Moto GP second on the grid, next to his team mate Colin Edwards, but got a bad start from which he never recovered.

Nikon 80-400 VR at 400mm, 1/500sec, f/10

 

1/1000sec, f/9                                            1/1500sec, f/9

Donnington Moto GP - Edwards vs. Stoner

Today I went up to Donnington for the British Moto GP (and managed to stay mainly dry despite the rain). You may have seen some bike racing on the TV, but until you actually go you can't really understand how LOUD the bikes are. Its an amazing experience.

Over the next few posts I will be showing some of my photos from today, all taken from the inside of the track, with a view towards the Esses and Goddards corners. Some of them will look a little blurry and I apologise for that - I was standing behind a chain-link fence.

The main battle of the race was between Colin Edwards and Casey Stoner. Edwards started in pole position and had a good start, while Stoner started fifth and didn't get a good launch. However, within a couple of laps Stoner was back up to the front and the following few laps saw him battling for an overtake. Eventually he got it and Edwards could do nothing to catch the Ducati.

Here's a shot taken while Edwards still had the lead.

Nikon 80-400 VR at 400mm, 1/640sec, f/10

Doctor Who - The (Robotic) Companion

The last couple of posts have both included only Doctor Who baddies. This is because there weren't really many series good guys at the exhibition.

This is probably unsurprising - they tend to be played by real people (and I doubt David Tennant would be willing to stand still at the exhibition for eight hours a day), whereas the baddies are generally large alien costumes (which might have people in them in the shows, but exist on their own after the cameras are switched off).

There was one 'good guy' there though - K9 - the Doctor's faithful robotic companion.

Nikon 12-24mm at 12mm, 1/60sec, f/11, flash

Doctor Who - The Bad Guys

Yesterday I posted my first picture from the previously mentioned Doctor Who Exhibition at Land's End.

I'm not one hundred percent sure why there would be a Doctor Who exhibition at Land's End, but due to the rain (and the fact that Doctor Who is just plain great) we decided to take a look.

It doesn't take long to wander around - and there is a bit of a gap towards the end, where they are obviously waiting for some Series 3 paraphernalia to arrive - but it's good fun none-the-less. You can get really close to the exhibits, and although probably against the rules you can even touch things like a Slitheen and the Cyberman.

Below are some of the baddies the Doctor has encountered - a Clockwork Droid (from The Girl in the Fireplace), a Cyberman and a better view of the Dalek from my last post.

  

Nikon 12-24mm

Do Not Touch The Dalek

I don't think this photo really needs an explanation - hopefully everyone knows what a Dalek is and shouldn't need the warning.

Nikon 12-24mm at 24mm, 1/60sec, f/11, flash

Tickets: transaction fees, services charges and postage?

A little bit of a rant coming up. Apologies.

Before going on holiday last week I bought some gig tickets from Ticketmaster and as well as adding a £3.00 service charge per ticket to the transaction price, they also wanted £2.00 to deliver the tickets ... by email!

Yesterday I was looking at tickets for another event and the charges were similarly offensive - £2.50 service charge per ticket, plus £4.95 for postage. A fiver? For an envelope (stuffed with adverts no doubt) and a stamp?

Funnily enough, this practice has been in the news today (and, more humorously, here). Maybe something will be done, or maybe its just a politician making some noise to get noticed and look cool. In the meantime, your best option is to shop around - if you can get to the box office and pay cash it will probably be cheapest, otherwise there are a number of on-line agencies available, for example See Tickets, Express Events and (the cheapest for the ticket I was looking for at least) Ticket Web.

London Motorbike Show

Went along to the London Motorbike Show on Saturday. Much as I expected - lots of new bikes to sit on and imagine owning (the Ducati 1098 ... mmmm), lots of things to tempt me from parting with cash (I resited - all I bought was a coffee and a car sticker), and a show of some description that is impossible to get into unless you're willing to stand in a queue for ages.

Still, a good time was had, and it gave me a chance to get a ride on my new bike - its only got another 120 miles to go and I'll be able to ride it properly :-)

I got a fair number of pictures from the event and a lot of them turned out very well - I am more and more pleased with the ability of the Sigma lens in low light conditions.

Here are some of my favourite shots from the show: Rossi's bike (the one he didn't quite win the championship on), a Ducati Desmosedici RR (the headlight grabbed my attention - it really looks like an eye staring back at you) and a custom bike (which would set you back £32500 if you wanted it).

Sigma 30mm, f4.5, 1/20sec, ISO-640

 

f2.5, 1/45sec, ISO-640                       f4.5, 1/160sec, ISO-640

Fireworks

I mentioned last week that I had some fireworks shots that I thought were pretty useless. Well they are as far as pictures of fireworks go. Far too low an aperture selected for anyone who is interested in why - I stupidly thought I'd keep it as low as possible to enable me to keep the shutter speed up as I had no tripod so was hand-holding. The upshot of that is that there's no focus as all, no definition to any of the sparkly trails of burning chemicals. I'll know better for next year!

Anyway, some of the shots are interesting none-the-less. If you ignore the fact that they are actually fireworks, it looks like I was doing some weird experiments with fibre optic cables in the dark, or maybe with some previously undiscovered luminescent flowers.

So, here are the 'best' of a bad bunch.