Photography Social- Picadilly Silly

So to preface this- I joined a Meetup group called Photography Social where you meet up with a group of 30-40 strangers at a pub where they give you an assignment pertaining to the area where are meeting-this one was in Picadilly and Soho. So we split into groups of 4 or 5, and got an hour to do our assignment in the surrounding area. Our assignment was to take photos of Picadilly/Soho, but without taking any photos of signs, letters, words, or advertisments-all my favorite things!!! See below for more.

oops-this one has words!

We submitted this as one of our ten photos between our group of 4, and the judge gave it the only 10 out of 10 from our group! I was so proud!!

Wandered into Chinatown

Also submitted this one-it didn't rank as high..haha

Submitted this one as well-we each chose shots from each others cameras to submit.

Not sure if numbers were banned or not...

hahaha

Looked better in person.lol

Ok, since I haven't been in Soho, I wanted to capture it a little more with all the signage and bright lights! These last 3 photos would not have been allowed.

Ok, so I ended up in a group with 3 other girls my age-one Austrailian, one Canadian, one British girl all living and working in London. They were super nice, and all were really good at photography with their fancy SLR cameras and mutliple lenses! There wasn't someone to actully help us with camera tips as I thought, but luckily, my group members were pretty knowledgable. When we met back at the pub-The Glasshouse Stores on Brewer Street, we looked through each others cameras to find our ten best shots. We then submitted them to a judge who came around while we were drikning and chatting to give us tips on better composition and what not and scored each one. My team didn't win, but it was definitely fun. Already looking forward to the next one!

A Day of Books!

One of my favorite bookstores!

Sotheran's

Picadilly Street

Fortnum & Mason-I don't know much about this store because it is so expensive. I don't think they would have even let me in in my tank top and jeans, so I didn't chance it. They definitely would have frowned upon me taking photos for the blog.

Haven't shown a picture of tube stops recently! Not sure what happened at Charing Cross back in medieval times, but the images are actually pretty brutal!


So as you may or may not have gathered by now, I love books. Not necessarily just to read, but also the way they look (preferably hardback). I buy a many a book with no intention to read it, just because I love the cover and binding. So when I watched Finding Neverland on Thursday night (one of the last dvds of mine that I brought that I haven't watched), I decided to go out on a hunt for a nice antique copy of Peter Pan. So I googled some antiquarium bookstores and set out! I started my search at New Bond Street at Marlborough Rare Books. It was not a store front, but rather marked on the street with a little A-Frame sign. I had to buzz myself into a building (luckily someone was there trying to do this first), and take a lift (if I was anymore claustrophobic, I would not have been able to take this 4x4 box) up to the fourth floor. They had a beautiful selection of books which looked 100's and 100's of years old. Too bad they were mainly medical, law, and arts books (I was proud for not even browsing the art books-they looked VERY expensive). The shop owner was very nice and pointed me to another store a few blocks away in between Regent's Street and Picadilly whihc might have what I was looking for-Sotheran's.

At first when I walked in, no one offered to help. But after I asked, they were extremely nice! The store was GREAT! Each section-Travel, Literature, Children's, Art & Architecture-all had a different person in charge who specialized in those type of rare books. I went straight to the children's section, and looked for Peter Pan. The only one I found was in a case-this meant $$$. It was an illustrated Peter Pan book from the early 1900's with gold leaf pages priced at 450 pounds! Needless to say, I didn't buy it. But I did find a book called Poster Journeys that had Abrams Undergroud art posters for 10 pounds! For a receipt, they typed out an invoice with my name and address, really making me feel like I had bought something special (it was neither rare, nor antique). I decided that working in a bookstore like this would go under the column of one of my dream jobs!

I had thoroughly gotten lost trying to find Sotheran's (for the first time I actually resorted to carrying my map out in front of my face as I walked and looked at street names), so when I came out of the store, I had NO idea where I was. Turns out, I was right around the corner from another bookstore-Hatchard's and the famous non-bookstore Fortnum & Mason. I went into Hatchard's 5 story building (it may have been more, but I only went up 5 stories). It was not a rare or antiquariun bookstore, but more like Daunt. Around since 1797, the building had great architecture and tons of unique books. I figured after this, I might as well visit my original bookstore-Daunt-and make it a book day. So I took the tube to Baker Street, and had a look around. On my way back to Bob's, I went to Leicester Square to return my Greece travel book at yet another bookstore and bought some Underground posters from the Transport Museum. It was a great day without much of a purpose but finding cool old bookstores-Perfect!

http://www.marlboroughbooks.com/

http://www.sotherans.co.uk/

http://www.hatchards.co.uk/