It has been many many years since I used to travel into work via Liverpool Street Station. Fifty two years ago in fact. The station itself, but also the whole of the city has changed dramatically since my daily trips as a young fresh faced lad of sixteen. Back then I worked for an insurance broker, but the city didn't really seem a good fit for me and I moved on to other things. My initial plan for this trip was to pay a visit to Spitalfields Market. I ended up also moving on to Shoreditch and then back through the city and over London Bridge to Borough Market.
On arriving in Spitalfields I hadn't walked more than a few hundred yards before I was confronted by security. Any photographer in London in recent years I am sure will have experienced the same thing. They had seen me pointing my camera skywards to photograph the buildings against the skyline. " You can take photos around here but you mustn't photograph the buildings" I was informed. " It's because of the times we live in" they added. Sad time indeed. On arrival to the market I wandered round and chatted to a few stall holders. It was fairly quiet being a Monday morning and I was able to get a couple of portraits there.This mobile fish stall cooks fresh fish Mediterranean style, very tasty it looked too.
This gentleman below "Mal", had a wonderful hat stall selling vintage head wear. There was a good range of hats here and Mal assured me that he could sort me out a suitable headpiece. Unfortunately I do not have good experiences wearing hats because of my fairly large hat size of 71/4 inches. So unfortunately hats do not really sit well on my cranium. However I did have a really good chat with Mal before I moved on towards Shoreditch which is famous for it's street art.
I wandered around Shoreditch amazed at the amount of graffiti on display In the vicinity.
For the larger "Art Work" I was waiting for suitable passers-by to add juxtaposition and additional interest to the images.
I am finding that I can do most of my editing within Lightroom Now. The first decision is finding the profile that works best for the image.I usually use one of the Fujifilm profiles - Astia Soft is one of my favourites. Occasionally I will dip out of Lightroom and into Photoshop for some small detailed adjustments. The files handle completely differently to the X system files. Of course this isn't an X Trans sensor. I find that I can dodge and burn ( or make other local changes) using just the brush options in Lightroom. This takes me back to my days of dodging and burning in a traditional darkroom. When I was editing X files I often made use of the gradient tool in Lightroom. Now with the bigger GFX files this does not seem to work so well for me and I find it easier to use the brushes.
After having explored the wonderful art work that Shoreditch had to offer I headed back to the main financial district of the city. My goodness how the area has changed from my aforementioned daily visits. The first image was taken along Bishopsgate.
I took the shot below to illustrate the contrast between the old and new architecture.
The Shard is 95 floors high designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Crossing over London Bridge I came across this guy promoting the “The London Bridge Experience”.
Then on to Borough Market, one of the largest and oldest food markets in London.dating back to at least the 12th century. The variety and quality of food on display makes a visit to this market a very worthwhile visit at any time of the year.
I hope to plan in more trips to London with the Fujifilm GFX 50R with the intention of exploring other areas of this amazing city.
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