taking pictures

Yesterday, I left my house shortly after nine, much too early for a Saturday morning. I had neither had breakfast nor coffee and was dead tired. Sitting in the tube, I wasn't quite sure that what I was doing was a smart move. Earlier in the week I had signed up for a photography group. Now I was on my way to their first meeting, a workshop on travel photography.

I'm so glad I went. The group met in a pub where a full English breakfast with lots of coffee waited for us participants. The 40-minute talk that followed didn't hold much new to me, but when it gave way to the assignment of the day, taking tourist pictures of London that are easily recognizable but offer a twist, the fun really started – and it wasn't necessarily because of photography.

The seventy photographers in attendance, most weighed down with several kilos of equipment worth more than a thousand pounds, self-assembled into little groups and took off into the rain. We went to Covent Garden, through Theatreland and to Leicester Square, taking some pictures but mostly chatting and sitting out the worst showers in coffee shops. Right before returning to the pub for lunch and a presentation of the results, we paid a visit to The Photographer's Gallery. It was too late for inspiration by then but the coffee was good.

Lunch was a roast and as heavy and unhealthy as breakfast had been, but it tasted great and our conversations kept flowing, only interrupted by individuals' staring at the tiny screen of their cameras to pick the one best shot to be shown to the group. While I had nothing on my card worth reproducing here, others were more creative. It was a good slideshow that followed lunch. All pictures showed familiar sights, but some in the most unexpected way.

By five, the group dispersed. I ambled about the grounds of Somerset House, seeing whether some artistic genius would befall me, but gentle rain drops were all that was falling. On my way to the tube I ran into a German I had met earlier at the meetup who proceeded to take me to meeting by Germans in another pub, in a part of town that I had never been to and would probably avoid alone at night. No worries, though. When we got there it was still light outside, and when we left, after eating more greasy food and watching Germany beat Liechtenstein in exactly the manner one would expect Germany to beat Liechtenstein, we did so in a big group.

I finally got home at eleven, my legs as heavy from walking as my stomach was from pub grub. Had the picture below, of Millennium Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral, been taken that same night, I could claim at least one moment of inspiration during the day. As it is, I had already bagged it a day earlier.