Another year has come and gone, with several fun photo meetups taking place throughout 2011 thanks to the fine folks at POTN.  This year, for a bit of a change we met up at the Winter Wonderland for a few drinks instead of the usual ‘photo-shoot come drinking fest’ that we’ve done in years past.

That’s not to say there weren’t a few camera’s on hand to capture the evening anyway.

It was a fairly relaxed evening with quite a lot of beer consumed.  We managed to stick around till the bitter end and were escorted out of the establishment by a team of security guards at the end of the evening.

Who says Beer & Photography don’t mix.  Looks like a perfect match if you ask me!

Few more images in the gallery.

Over the weekend Lee, Matt and I wandered down to Regents & Oxford streets for a bit of street photography.  The city was kind enough to close the roads to traffic on Saturday in order to encourage the Christmas shoppers to come out and play.

And come out they did!

It was essentially an orgy of advertising with loads of branded freebies being handed out and big screen televisions reminding us of what products we need to buy and which musicals we should see.  I know, musicals?  I was surprised too.  Those crafty thespians are getting wise.  There were some folks who were there just for the fun of it though.

Move over Santa, this year I’m sitting on Boba Fett’s knee and telling him what I want for Christmas.

From the throngs of shoppers on Oxford street, we decided to make our way to Hyde Park to experience the Winter Wonderland and the throngs of shoppers there.  The second group of shoppers were slightly more bearable, I think due to the close proximity to mulled wine, beer and Bavarian sausages.  We managed to find a bit of beer ourselves.

The Wonderland is infinitely better this year than it has been in the past.  Previous years had a sorry showing of maybe a dozen stalls and a few standard carnival rides that had been smothered in Christmas decorations to make them seem festive.  I’m sorry, but putting your 15 foot Grim Reaper in a red jumper doesn’t automatically mean your haunted house ride becomes full of yule tide joy.

This year they pulled out all the stops.  At a guess I’d estimate there were over a hundred shops and stalls and most were fairly unique and interesting.  There was no end to the sausage stands or mulled wine vendors, you almost had to feel sorry for the lonely Chinese food stall that was set up.  Nobody comes to a German Christmas market for sweet & sour chicken balls I’m afraid.

Saturday was actually my second visit to the Winter Wonderland, and I don’t imagine it will be my last either.  Definitely worth a visit or two, even if you’ve already finished up your Christmas shopping for the year.  Yea right!

There’s a few more photos in the gallery.

I spent a bit of time in Hyde Park last evening trying to capture the latest autumn colours.  I think all of the photos that got posted from this set were done with my tilt-shift lens.  It doesn’t get as much use as it should, mainly due to being a manual focus lens and the fact that I’m rubbish at manual focusing.

I thought the fact that it would require more attention from me would help to slow me down and think about what I was shooting.  It succeeded in this, but mainly it succeeded in increasing the number of out of focus photos I ended with at the end of the day.  Always a learning process, and the lesson yesterday was to bring along a tripod and use LiveView 🙂

Here are a few keepers from the day and as usual, there are a few more in the gallery.