I’d like to say I’m a beginner photographer – but honestly I’m a trainee beginner photographer. I love taking photos, but do nothing with them. A few photos will get printed, some I will share on social media. But most of them just sit on my hard drive, or in the cloud. Since starting my photographer course, I have taken more photos, as the course also included some Photoshop units, I have even been editing the photos. However, they are still sitting on my hard drive taking up gigabytes. It struck me this blog is the ideal platform for me to show case some of the photos.
Last month, I got a telephoto lens. In all the photographer blogs or books, they suggest using a telephoto lens when capturing wildlife or landscapes. Living in London, I knew I wouldn’t see any interesting wildlife. But figured I could head the my duck pond in a nearby park and take some photos on the ducklings. Unfortunately, the ducklings were in hiding, but I did see a heron.
As for capturing landscapes, Jason suggested we had another visit to the Skygarden. The Skygarden is a public space with a café and restaurant on the top of the Walkie Talkie building in the London. Being the heart of the financial district in London, the building offers excellent views of the River Thames, Docklands to the east and Westminster to the west.
Tickets to the Skygarden are complimentary, but you have to book in advance. Being free, the tickets go quickly, especially for the weekend. The trick is to book your tickets three weeks before you want to go on Monday morning. Alternatively, you can have a meal in the restaurant, Darwin’s Brassiere.
The day we booked coincided with the London Marathon, as a result some of the streets around the Walkie Talkie had been blocked off, so I couldn’t get many photos from street level. There was chance to get some fun photographs of the runners from London Bridge.
I did manage to finish Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell – I’ll be honest I was a little put off by this book when I first heard about it. In recent years people seemed to be obsessed with Young Adult literature, like Divergence or Mortal Instruments and I have had no interest in them. The idea of reading a book about a girl obsessed with YA literature really didn’t appeal. Instead I was pleasantly surprised by this book.
I’ve also been planning my goals for the next few books on the Mrs Darcy Challenge. I am ashamed to admit I have never read Pride and Prejudice – something I should have read at school and it was also published before I was born, so I am currently reading that and planning on reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies next.
by Margaret Stohl
I read a lot of reviews about this show over the summer online, the whole of the first season has just been added to Amazon Prime.