London Photos: London life in images by Kim Gilmour

It was a heatwave in London this weekend – and it felt just like Christmas time back in the last 1990s. Yes, I’m originally from the Southern Hemisphere. In fact, the mood is rather weird, and I hope the photo kind of explains it.

Absolutely no one was wearing jackets and the heat was so stifling. The beer and the water was warm, the fridges were defrosting, I braved the hot and sweaty buses but didn’t dare take the Tube.

Comments open for a limited time only

It’s Open Squares weekend in London – a good opportunity for photos! We wandered around the Inner Temple area, and saw the Japanese Roof Garden at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Tomorrow we’ll visit some of the private gardens in EC2.

This is the first time I’ve actually shot in RAW format, so it’ll take a bit of getting used to.

Fountain Court, Inner Temple.

This was taken during a break in the proceedings during a screening of ‘William Eggleston in the Real World’, a documentary on the famous photographer by Michael Almereyda. Unfortunately, a third of the way through the film (which was a backup that had arrived that afternoon as DHL failed to deliver the master), the NTSC version’d DVD kept freezing – so much for digital film! Luckily, Martin Parr (one of my favoured photographers) and Michael Almereyda himself, as well as Val Williams, a photography curator and writer, were on hand to chat and take questions. Unluckily for some, the questions were a little cringeworthy and kept veering towards ‘what were the bits we had missed?’… and one rude patron asked if they were going to get a refund!
Anyway, the one snippet I got out of the evening is that Parr is experimenting with digital camera phones at the moment because he likes how they can take photos in low light, and without anyone knowing.

Some of my London snow photos will be complementing a short performance of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, to be held at the British Library on 27 June at 6.30pm featuring actress Paula Wilcox. Tickets to the event, which lasts for an hour, are 6 pounds and can be purchased from the British Library website.

My parents were visiting us in London recently and last Saturday I took them to London’s famous Notting Hill markets – you might remember I had a few photos from the last time I went in January/February. My mum stopped me and pointed at a rather odd woman who was carrying a mannequin in a vibrant summer bag. I had to be surreptitious about taking this photo – luckily I had my compact digital camera with me rather than my SLR this time. A few seconds after I took this photo she ducked into the supermarket.

Read the rest of this entry »