24 Hours of London – 1st/2nd Hours – Chinatown , Holborn , Covent Garden

For the first two hours of Photo24 myself and Martin Sylvester decided to explore Covent Garden , quite closeby to the hotel in Holborn where we had the initial briefing.

The weather was quite overcast in the first hour or so , so I decided to stick to mainly telephoto work around Holborn, getting abstract views by looking to zoom in and frame tight areas where the lack of contrast wouldn’t be so much of an issue. As I got to Chinatown we decided to split , and I’d decided to shoot some wider shots of Gerrard Street particularly the two landmark gates at each end.  Decided to run a few experiments lying on the floor , and tracking the movements of people through the space with the zoom on the Tokina 11-16 , Banzai-style as one person remarked nearby! The rain opened up for a while just before I’d reached Gerrard Street , making things interesting , particularly with a nearby alley with some interesting stalls selling various snacks and nice trinkets.

I got a little lost initially around Leicester Square trying to find the tube station! and Happened to run into a very interesting chap blowing bubbles in front of quite a crowd going the wrong way down towards Oxford Circus! Couple of calls to Martin later , and with the help of Google Maps I’d found the place again , though it didn’t help the tube station had two entrances , quite separate to each other. There was a lot of people round too!