Lux Fine Photography: Spring

Showing posts with label Spring. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

Canary Wharf, London

I have a new favourite place in London - Canary Wharf. Lots and lots of glass, interesting architecture, skyscrapers, and reflections galore. The Canary Wharf Underground Station is a masterpiece in itself - has a very Metropolis feeling to it, and is a very deep hole in the ground! This building is the HSBC building on a Friday afternoon when all the suits were hard at work.

From Wikipedia:

"Canary Wharf is built on the site of the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs. From 1802, the area was one of the busiest docks in the world. By the 1950s, the port industry began to decline, leading to the docks closing by 1980. Canary Wharf itself takes its name from No. 32 berth of the West Wood Quay of the Import Dock. This was built in 1936 for Fruit Lines Ltd, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Lines for the Mediterranean and Canary Island (Insula Canaria (from canis) "Island of Dogs") fruit trade. At their request, the quay and warehouse were given the name Canary Wharf.

Today Canary Wharf is a major business district located in London, United Kingdom. It is one of London's two main financial centres, alongside the traditional City of London, and contains many of the UK's tallest buildings, including the second tallest (and tallest completed), One Canada Square. Canary Wharf contains around 14,000,000 square feet (1,300,000 m²) of office and retail space, of which around 7,900,000 square feet (734,000 m²) is owned by Canary Wharf Group. Around 90,000 people work in Canary Wharf and it is home to the world or European headquarters of numerous major banks, professional services firms and media organisations including Barclays, Citigroup, Clifford Chance, HSBC, KPMG, Skadden and Thomson Reuters."

Sunday, 15 May 2011

May Day Parade, Quorn

These fine pairs of legs belong to members of the Quorn Pipe Band in the May Day Parade, 2011. You could hear them well before you saw them coming down the street, kilts swings, tassels flying.

Friday, 13 May 2011

No. 18

Monday, 9 May 2011

Mary Gauthier @ The Musician, Leicester

We went to see Mary Gautier last night at The Musician in Leicester. She really was awesome, wonderful musician. She was accompanied by Tania Elizabeth and Dave Glover. Tania Elizabeth was on fiddle, and was fantastic, really into the music, and a great accompaniment to Mary Gautier. Dave Glover was an Irish guy who is currently working in Nashville. He was good, I think he has potential, but MG outclassed him by miles. I would say go see them all if they are in the area.

From Wikipedia:

"Gauthier was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Given up at birth by a mother she never knew, Gauthier was adopted by an Italian Catholic couple in Thibodaux, Louisiana. At age 15, she ran away from home, and spent the next several years in drug rehabilitation, halfway houses, and living with friends; she spent her 18th birthday in a jail cell. Struggling to deal with being adopted and her sexuality, she used drugs and alcohol. These experiences provided fodder for her songwriting later on. Spurred on by friends, she enrolled at Louisiana State University as a philosophy major, dropping out during her senior year.

After attending the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, she opened a Cajun restaurant in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, Dixie Kitchen (also the eponymous title of her first album). Mary ran, and cooked at, the restaurant for eleven years. She was arrested for drunk driving opening night, July 12, 1990, and has been sober ever since. After achieving sobriety, she was driven to dedicate herself full-time to songwriting, and embarked upon a career in music. She wrote her first song at age 35.

She sold her share in the restaurant to finance her second album, Drag Queens in Limousines, in 2000. The summer of the release of this album, she was invited to play 11 major folk festivals, including the Newport Folk Festival. Drag Queens in Limousines won in The 1st Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Folk/Singer-Songwriter Song, and she was nominated for Best New Artist of the year by the Boston Music Awards. She was nominated for three GLAMA awards ( Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards) and won best country artist of the year. In 2002 her third album,"Filth and Fire" was named "Best Indy CD of the year" by Jon Pareles of The New York Times, in 2002.

She moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 2001 and secured a publishing deal with Harlan Howard Songs, then secured a record deal with Lost Highway , a division of Universal Music, in 2003. Her first major label release, in 2005, Mercy Now was on the top 10 list for the year in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily News, and Billboard Magazine. She was awarded "New Artist of the Year" by The Americana Music Association the same year. Mercy Now was voted the #6 Record of the Decade by No Depression Magazine. Her second Lost Highway release, "Between Daylight and Dark" appeared in September 2007. She has had her songs recorded by numerous artists, including Jimmy Buffett, Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Bill Chambers and Candi Staton. Her latest release is called The Foundling and was released by Razor and Tie Records in 2010. It was named the #3 Record of the Year in the LA Times by music writer Randy Lewis."

Thursday, 5 May 2011

I went out walking...

It's funny when I was fifteen and full of grace - or is that face? I painted a picture of an imagined tree - it looked very much like this one. It is a very cool tree. The fields behind are hi-lighter yellow and very, very pretty. This was taken on the pathway from Shepshed to Belton, Leicestershire.

Monday, 2 May 2011

Spring has sprung!

I took this as the sun was setting and we were on the final leg of our evening walk through a field full of lovely flowers. I liked the movement in this shot, I tweaked it a bit with a golden yellow filter, the flowers were yellow to start with so it just deepened it a little. I think it works.

Saturday, 30 April 2011

Kinsale, Co. Cork

He was so cute just sitting out on the step, and so well behaved as he never moved off the step, even though he would have been straight on to the road and away if he had. If this dog had been anything like my childhood Australian Terrier it would have been away and gone just as the door opened a crack.

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

No. 16

This was taken along the old bluebell railway (which no longer exists) that ran between Loughborough and Coalville, Leicestershire. It was named for the bluebelles that would line the route. It is now a walking track that is shrouded in bushes and trees that can be seen on google earth, but isn't acknowledged as a walkway by google maps.

Monday, 25 April 2011

Botanic Gardens, Wellington

Springtime in Wellington, New Zealand is pretty special. The Wellington Botanic Gardens plant many, many tulip bulbs (approximately 25,000), and wait for the spring growth to pop up and bloom. Garden beds full of tulips looking gorgeous with their many colours. Of course they have many other plants, flowering and non-flowering, they have many fine rose bushes as well. Well worth a visit!

Friday, 22 April 2011

Spring Carnival, Upper Hutt

This lovely Punch and Judy show was part of the Upper Hutt 2010 Spring Carnival, both young and old(er) stopped and watched the puppet show. It was a great day out, the weather mostly held out and there were a lot of people out to see the stalls and listen to the various performers.

Sunday, 10 April 2011

No. 13

These lovely trees surround the Broadmarsh reservoir, Shepshed, attached to one of the trees was a sign saying keep out. Which is understandable you don't want people swimming in drinking water. I love how the trees look the part like they are guarding the land. I also like how it reminds me of silent movie backgrounds.

Saturday, 9 April 2011

No. 12

Fresh off the boat so to speak. We walked to Mount Saint Bernards Abbey, just outside of Shepshed, Leicestershire. It was a lovely day today, very sunny with a hint of breeze. We walked through the Broadmarsh Reservoir and slogged up the hill - this is halfway up the hill in between the reservoir and the abbey.

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Pretty, Pretty Sainsbury's

Hottest day of the year so far! Sainsbury's is not really somewhere where you'd think of funky dunky squares of coolness - but what do I know? I liked how almost every window pane was showing something different, even when they were reflecting the same object.

Monday, 28 March 2011

The Folley

This folly is on the way to Shepshed from Loughborough. It looks very peaceful and would be rurally idyllic were it not for the gentle hum of the M1. Every time I go past it on the double decker bus I think that would make a good photo, from that height. Unfortunately I am no where near that height, but I still think it looks good.

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Yay! Spring is finally here!

I haven't seen a Spring since April of 2009 due to my globetrotting habits and just bad timing. So this year I am determined to have a lovely Spring and blistering hot Summer even if I have to go somewhere on the Algarve to do so!

Thursday, 17 March 2011

Happy St. Patricks Day!

I took this in 2009 at the St Patricks Day Parade and Market in Cork, Co. Cork. He had a lovely wig and didn't mind posing for me either. It was a nice day out with so many people on the Grand Parade and no showers, even a little bit of sunshine!

Wednesday, 16 March 2011

The River Liffey (An Life), Dublin

I visited Dublin last March - freezing cold but lots of interesting things to photograph. I really liked the River Liffey reflections - of which I took a number of pictures. This one I played with a bit - I like it tho'.

From Wikipedia:

"The Liffey (An Life in Irish) flows through the centre of Dublin. The river was previously named An Ruirthech, meaning "fast (or strong) runner". The word Liphe (or Life) referred originally to the name of the plain through which the river ran, but eventually came to refer to the river itself. The Liffey rises in the Liffey Head Bog between Kippure and Tonduff in the Wicklow mountains, forming from many streamlets. It flows for around 125 km (78 mi) through counties Wicklow, Kildare and Dublin before entering the Irish Sea at its mouth at the mid-point of Dublin Bay, on a line extending from the Baily lighthouse to the Muglin Rocks.

The earliest stone bridge over the Liffey of which there is solid evidence was the Bridge of Dublin (on the site of the current Fr. Mathew Bridge), built by the Dominicans in 1428, which survived well into the 18th century. This bridge with four arches included various buildings such as a chapel, bakehouse and possibly an inn and replaced an earlier wooden bridge (Dubhghalls Bridge) on the same site. Island Bridge (a predecessor of the current bridge) was added in 1577. With the development of commercial Dublin in the 17th century, four new bridges were added between 1670 and 1684: Barrack, or Bloody Bridge, (the forerunner of the current Rory O'More Bridge), Essex Bridge (Grattan Bridge), Ormond Bridge (O'Donovan Rossa Bridge) and Arran Bridge. The oldest bridge still standing is the Mellows Bridge, (originally Queens Bridge) constructed in 1764 on the site of the Arran Bridge, which was destroyed by floods in 1763. The first iron bridge was the elegant Ha'penny Bridge built in 1816. The newest bridge is the Samuel Beckett Bridge opened in December 2009. A suspension bridge, it swivels to allow river traffic to pass."

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

No. 8

Wednesday, 9 March 2011

The Clothing Agency, Nottingham

I saw this abandoned building while I was sitting on the bus and made myself go back and take a picture. I liked the colour, the unloved peeling paint, the obsolete phone number and missing letters.