November sort of flew by without much photography activity from me.  I think the fact that it was either raining or monsooning (that’s a word, no need to look it up) for 98% of the month put a damper (that’s right, I’m telling puns now) on my creativity.  I did manage to take a single, postable photo however so the month wasn’t a total bust.

It’s pretty close to straight out of the camera with the exception of a couple of minor adjustments.  The whole thing took about a hour to set up and then about 30-40 shots to get one where I liked how the ‘snow’ was falling.  I did a couple of these for my 365 last year and I’ve now got some new Lord of the Rings lego, so expect some Middle Earth themed shots soon.

Here’s the setup shot if you’re interested.

The softbox is essentially the main light, acting as the sun in the background.  I have a wonky homemade snoot on the inverted flash at the back to give me my round hot spot for the actual sun, and the big umbrella up front is just for fill.  I used some black foil for the mountains in the background and all of the snow is just baking powder (I used baking soda in the past, but I like the snowfall look of the powder better).

Anyway, that’s it for November.

Depending on how you look at it, London has been blessed or cursed with a fair bit of snow over the past few days.  For me, I love it!  It’s just hovering around freezing which means it’s not too cold to be out for a stroll or to shoot a few shots.  If you happen to have any desire to travel to or from London itself by any of the available means then it’s more akin to an extended Freddy Krueger style nightmare with very little chance of escape.

The Canadian in me can’t help but chuckle a little bit at these catastrophic weather events that bring tens of millimeters of snow and drag the city to it’s knees.  Back home we call this sort of weather June.

Not one to be an ungrateful foreigner who moans about the country I feel I have to say I really do love living here.  But honestly, every year the snow falls and every year the government & transportation services look up into the sky and claim that Armageddon is at last upon us.  Everything shuts down for days while some department does a feasibility study on whether or not the country should invest in the infrastructure that would be able to handle such a mild dusting of snow.

The answer comes days after the snow is gone and is inevitably No, which sets us up perfectly to do it all again when the next blizzard arrives.

Anyway, the whole reason I was out on Saturday night (after consuming festive beverages the four nights prior) was to celebrate a friends birthday and enjoy some of the pre-Christmas spirit.  As a result, I felt at the time that my photos were a lot better than they actually were, hence all of the heavy processing to salvage a few of the shots.

There are a couple more in the gallery as per usual.

I pieced together a couple of Panoramic images from the snow day yesterday.  They’re all of the Tower of London, one from the afternoon and two from the evening.

They’re fairly large images, just so you know!

All of those Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” adaptations I watched growing up as a child led me to believe that every year the city of London was covered in a fresh blanket of snow.  I can tell you that generally that’s a terrible, terrible lie.

However, starting late Sunday night the snow started to fall and it kept on falling well into Monday.  At first it was just enough snow to make it stick to the ground, then it started piling up.  Pretty soon, it was the “worst snowstorm in 18 years“.

As a Canadian, it was pretty funny to watch the city grind to a halt after the first few inches of snow formed on the ground.  All bus services suspended, the same for overland trains and most of the Underground was disabled as well.  The city was eerily quiet, not just from the lack of people but also the dampening effect of all this white stuff.

To be fair to the English, they just haven’t got the infrastructure in place to deal with this sort of snow fall.  I saw one sand/salt truck out on my walk into the office and many different implements used for shoveling snow from brooms and dustpans to sheets of wood and anything flat and sturdy enough to scoop it away.

Work was more or less cancelled but I decided to walk into the office anyways and take a few photos along the way.  It felt a bit like being back home, only not quite so cold.  It was a really cool day, and I had a pretty happy grin on my face for most of it.  That being said, I’m pretty happy that it’s all melting under the bright, sunny sky today.

I don’t think anybody should have to suffer more than a day or two of winter after all.

Photos from the rest of my journey into the office are here.