Wednesday, April 4, 2007

London!

London!

One girl, one camera, five days - what do I do? So much to see, so little time - and really, people, London, how do I ban that on (digital) film?

London streets, they are wise. Also, they talk to you.
At first I thought it was the tyranny of fashion trying to keep tastelessly dressed pedestrians off the sidewalks.
Then, I speculated that it might be about the fact that on this island, cars drive on the wrong other side of the road, and the many one way streets and multi-street intersections make traffic confusing even to those who turn their heads in the right direction already.

But there was more. The streets were right: If there's so much to see yet time (as well as the patience of those looking at the pictures later) is limited, you simply have to adapt the way you perceive the world around you. You need to

Look right!


Oh, and I also looked right on more levels than that: I seem to have looked as if I knew exactly what I was doing. Surprisingly many people approached me to ask about directions to streets, shops, junk food places.


Anyway -- on to the story.

Have a few thumbnails to make you curious:


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The first idea:
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Cram as much tourist value into one picture as you possibly can! Here, wasting as little space as I possibly could, I offer you: Tower Bridge, if only to add colour, the Tower of London and the Gherkin.



In the same fashion, with more Tower Bridge and more architecture by Sir Norman Foster, this:

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or even, adding height and life and confusion and bold lines to City Hall and Tower bridge, this:

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Yes, this is working quite well, and so the following picture follows the same concept: There are narrow, colourful and not very high buildings stuck together, complete with a pub, but there is also the very swift transition to something much less inviting and bright, and there's even a black cab thrown in for good measure:

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Because there are many contrasts in London, and they can very close together.
As with loos and laws:


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or on Piccadilly Circus, where all kinds of things clash with each other and hordes of tourists, and the red bus for the tourist snapshot tried to escape but didn't make it in time:

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...but really, who knows what is Right and Wrong?
Entries with other ways of Looking Right will follow. But you knew that anyway.