Over the last few years, I have spent quite some time rediscovering interests that I neglected in my twenties. It’s so easy to get all mingled up with work and relationships that I took very little time to focus on my hobbies and things that I enjoy such as writing, music and also, photography. Photography walks in London helped me practice the latter while meeting people at the same time.
Working at Canon, I was sitting at the source of some truly amazing photography equipment, and when the EOS 100D was released – the smallest DSLR camera in the market at the time and a really great little camera– I put my employee discount to good use and bought it. I didn’t know anything about DSLR photography or how to use a DSLR camera, and whilst there are lots of online tutorials available on the Canon website, as well as YouTube and blogs, I’m not good at self-teaching myself this kind of stuff.
Meetup is a fine way to meet people in London and do stuff that you like. I have done a fair bit of hiking and photography meetups here and met some really lovely people this way. Aside from the photography walks available on Meetup, there are also free walks organised where people come together, accessible e.g. via the Facebook group London Photo Walk. Most of the photography walks on meetup I joined were organised by The London Photographers School and led by professional photographer Zara Matthews. They now cost around 15 GBP (17 EUR) each and last between 3-4 hours. Every meetup had a different topic or technique. Usually, Zara would explain the techniques to us and the camera settings necessary to achieve this technique, then she would let us put the advice to use for half an hour or 45 minutes, after which we would get together to discuss initial results and then go for a second round etc. I liked that it wasn’t just a dry theory course but we had enough information to get going and practice, and Zara was around for questions and help. I learned a lot in these sessions and it was really good fun too. And I indeed met people who I became good friends with! I have included some examples of the results of these walks below.
Drawing with light in Hyde Park
After my first photography meetup about beginners photography and learning the basic camera settings, I joined this meetup at night in Hyde Park where we learned how to draw with light. This effect is achieved with a tripod and really long shutter speed settings of about 5 to 30 seconds, while reducing the ISO to the lowest setting. We brought torches and upon activating the shutter, painted with the light in the sky which led to amazing effects.
Bokeh effect and depth of field at Broadway Market
Broadway market is another one of London’s amazing markets and one photography walk took us there to learn about depth of field, where some things are in the foreground while the background is blurred out. This is achieved with a low aperture setting. The Bokeh effect is a very pretty light effect that has been defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light”.
Black and white photography at Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery in North London is a massive cemetery dating back to 1839. Around 170,000 people are buried there in around 53,000 graves, one of them being Karl Marx, who was born in the nearest city to my home village, Trier. It’s easy to get lost on the little pathways around the graveyard and the old statues and grave stones are perfect objects for black and white photography. We practiced sharpness and filters that gave the black and white a slightly different appearance too.
