207/365 Heron

This heron was hanging around a coot’s nest in Verulamium Park on the River Ver.

I suspect he was looking for dinner 🙁

Technical notes: Nikon D90 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF. ISO 200, 1/60 at f/4.0.

201/365 Crane

Blackfriars National Rail station is being largely rebuilt and extended across the river for 2011; until then the Underground station is closed.  There is a lot of work going on above and below ground; this is one of the cranes involved.

It’s a mess at the moment, but 12 carriage trains will make it worthwhile, I’m sure!

Technical notes: Nikon D90 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF. ISO 200, 1/320 at f/11.0

Some of you may know that I’m a fan of Scott Kelby. He’s a great photo educator, both for photography and software.

Anyway, last year he arranged a worldwide photo walk to celebrate the launch of his Digital Photography Book Volume 2. This year he organised a second one, co-incidentally at the time of the launch of his The Digital Photography Book Volume 3. I signed up for the London South Bank walk, ably led by Dave Newton of EOS Network.  We started at 5:30pm at the London Eye and wandered for around two hours along to the Millennium Bridge, taking in the skate park and other photo opportunities on the South Bank.   The scheduled proceedings having finished, we repaired to the Anchor pub and commandeered a corner of their balcony – well, we got a small corner which soon became a big corner once we scared off the natives by talking of ISO, f-stops and lens choices, along with a lot of rivalry between Canon and Nikon users who only called a truce when piling in on the lone Olympus user!  After a supper of fish and chips (and mushy peas – yay!) we headed back out for the sunset and the following twilight.

A slideshow of my photos (just push play, or click through here for the full set):

And our merry band (photo courtesy of Dave Newton):

photowalk

It’s been hot, hot, hot all week.  The gentle breezes of today are very welcome.  I’ve been trying to avoid the peak of the rush hour for the last week and, if I’ve not been able to, to get on a slow train which are normally a little cooler. So I’ve not been too much like this:

Poor Phoebe has taken to lying under the bed.  It’s not easy when you wear a fur coat that you can’t take off.   She’s a lot more herself today, and has been purring around the house like normal.