Columbia Road Shop Windows

Christmas at Columbia Road Flower Market

Columbia road flower market is a visual pleasure for photographers, full with colourful plants, herbs, bulbs, while the air is filled with the chant of the flower sellers "everything's a fiver".

This time the market was even more in a festive mood, with piles of christmas trees inundating the surrounding streets, street musicians warming up the atmosphere and beautiful sunshine.

Urban Photography: "If Walls Could Talk" Workshop

I've recently participated in an urban photography workshop around Shoreditch organised by the DVJ group of the Royal Photographic Society and photographer Ida Pap.

So what exactly is urban photography and how is it different from street photography? 

Instead of documenting the street life and trying to snap interesting images of people and their interactions, urban photographers concentrate on their surroundings. The scene becomes the main subject, while the once in a while occurring people are only there to emphasise it. 

This approach gives a great amount of freedom to the photographer, who becomes free to roam around the streets anonymously and create something new from very mundane subjects like scraped walls,  puddles, discarded cartons, etc

Here are a few of the snapshots taken on the day

Red Umbrella

Take me for a ride

Butterfly Graffiti

Brick Lane Reflections

Asymmetry

Painted sky

If I can bicycle, I bicycle

Child Play

I'm lost without you..

Autumn colours

The Barbican - architectural vision or concrete monster?

The first time I set foot in the Barbican it instantly reminded me of the communist buildings back home, concrete monsters, with labyrinthian corridors, something out of a Kafka novel. 

However the more I go there the more I learn to appreciate its utopian socialist architecture. It is both out-of-fashion and futuristic, almost awkward, surrounded by the modern glass skyscrapers of the City.

No wonder it was voted "London's ugliest building"in Grey London pole in September 2003, however it's considered one of the most fashionable places to live in the City. And the largest performing arts centre in Europe.

The saw-toothed Barbican towers were the tallest residential buildings in Europe at the time they were built in the 60s.

The Barbican concrete estate, inspired by the Brutalism architectural style in the 50s.

Guildhall School of Music and Drama, with its brick boxes used as practice rooms, moved to the Barbican in 1977.

One of the few suspended walkways or "ped-ways" in the Barbican. Initially planned in the 50s as a 50km elevated pedestrian system across the whole City, the project was soon abandoned and only a few remain today.

Juliette Binoche and Nicolas Bouchaud in Mademoiselle Julie @ the Barbican

Damien Hirst @ Tate Modern

"Life and death are the biggest polar opposites there are. I like love and I like hate...I like all those opposites. On and off. Happy and sad. In an artwork I always try to say something and deny it at the same time" Damien Hirst

A stroll through Bermondsey street

Bermondsey street, once a shabby neighbourhood, full of derelict warehouses and old victorian houses is slowly becoming one of the hip areas of London. It is now home to around 15 restaurants and bars, a new food market under the railway arches, shadowed by the Shard, the tallest building in Western Europe.

Soaking in the sun on Maltby street

Maltby street market - Gourmet food served under the railway arches in Bermondsey

 Best coffee in town, without the Borough market queues

Picturesque wine/flower shop on Bermondsey street

Modern italian food in chic surroundings...prepare to book in advance

 Some of the atmospheric Victorian buildings that could be found in the area

St Mary Magdalen's Church

Gilbert and George's London Pictures at White Cube - comprising 292 pictures based on more than 3000 newspapers' posters they have stolen during the past 6 years

The images are grouped together by stand-out words: Money, Bankers, Tube, Racism and others, a reflection of today's London society