London Photos: London life in images by Kim Gilmour

Funny signs, interesting street observations and “found items” at Funky Pancake.

Someone came to this site through Google after typing in something about what the weather’s going to be like over summer. Well, if this report is anything to go by, things aren’t going to be good for Polaroid Manipulations!

“With just a few exceptions, we are likely to see rain and grey skies for the next three or four months. The bright spots will include a warmer-than-expected Easter in a couple of weeks plus a mini heatwave at the end of May.”

Walked past a jumble sale at the Kingsgate Community Centre in Kilburn, where a host of tat was being sold inside the hall. All the stuff on this table, for instance, was being sold for 20p.

Letterboxes in Britain. I’m used to postboxes and I still don’t like letterbox slots. Here’s one I passed earlier today!

It has been a while since a new Polaroid has been posted. Winter seems to drain the light and colour out of London, two things that you need for a good Polaroid photo. Stay tuned for more colourful Polaroid Manipulations as Spring approaches.

In the meantime, this is St Pauls Cathedral photographed as usual with an old Polaroid SX-70 camera on a rather drab day. I manipulated the emulsion while it was still wet to give it a painterly feel.

Went to MTV Networks to take photos for a piece my colleague Chris is doing for our magazine on MTV’s online strategy. We got to wander around some of the MTV online team’s desks – they’re all very kitsch, full of plastic hula dancers, Potato Heads, plastic ducks, snow domes and other popular paraphenalia. One of the executive offices we went into had items like an MTV Awards statue on the desk, a framed article on Crowded House’s last gig in Sydney, photographs of pop stars like Kylie Minogue, a toy slot machine and so on. All the desks there have their own mini television hooked up to MTV, although the screens’ volume was on very low. The photo above is of what adorned the top of one of the “dividers” between the open plan desks.

Kilburn High Road is full of el cheapo discount shops, street stalls selling junk, Argos shoppers (hey, I’ve got the catalogue!), families with screaming kids and gridlock. Some people really hate it; to me it’s a necessity when looking for staple goods and cheap household items, although I don’t spend too much time loitering around it. The Sainsbury’s is horrible though. You can’t find any tofu there whatsoever! Here’s a shop on the main drag selling grey market goods — I have to say I’ve even bought a few things from here, namely the Dove Cream Bath (two pounds here, 3.49 at Waitrose).

A bit of an abstract photo today. Taken from a moving car while driving through suburbia.

If this is your first time here (and came via Yahoo!), hello! You might want to check out what is here…

This is a photo of the London Millennium Bridge taken with an ancient Polaroid SX-70 camera bought for L7 off eBay. The emulsion stays soft for hours after taking a photo and can be manipulated using sticks or anything sharp that you can find lying around. So there is no Photoshop in this picture.

More Polaroid manipulations of London can be viewed at the Polaroid Manipulations Category.

At right are other categories and images to see here – some of them might take a little while to load, though! You can also search for images at the right hand side. (Look up stuff like “snow”!)

Might take some time out tomorrow to take some photos, but it’s so overcast and drab! I’m just back from seeing Australian band Powderfinger play at the Hammersmith Apollo here in London. Everyone had camera phones and held up the phones during “classic songs” so their friends could hear. I wonder if anyone posted to their weblogs during the show? And does this kind of thing really annoy you in excess or is it just me…

Just saw this great site, the Rasterbator – all you do is upload a small photograph (less than 1MB), then the site generates a pixellated version of it which you can then expand and crop to fit on many, many sheets of A4 paper. We did a massive one of our boss who’s away today and stuck it on the wall. It fits 6 A4 sheets across and 7 A4 down!