London never ceases to amaze me – Richmond may not exactly be central London, but it’s part of Greater London, sits within the M25, is connected by both London Underground and Overground trains, and is part of the same bus network that serves Trafalgar Square and the London Eye. It’s only a five mile cycle ride from where I live – closer than the office!

And yet, there’s a great big whopping park, filled with woods, grasslands, ferns and plenty of wildlife – from flocks of bright green parakeets (not so native) to herds of red and fallow deer. Under the guide of Darren Hector, we took a route down from Pembroke Lodge to the ponds, back up round Sidmouth Wood to our starting point.

We didn’t see much rutting – I only witnessed one fight from afar – but there were deer aplenty, and lovely autumn colours as a backdrop.

This is my favourite shot of the day, a beautiful red deer taking a wander in the dying ferns before lying down for a nap – which you can see here on Flickr.

No images of my own to go with this post, unfortunately; this month’s PhotowalkLondon was a treasure hunt along the South Bank between Blackfriars and Southwark bridges, and as I’d helped organise it I was allowed to sit in the pub all afternoon – how terrible!

This was the first PhotowalkLondon after the Summer recess, and although it wasn’t the best attended we’ve ever organised, I think in many ways it was pretty good. We set a list of 25 clues – some like ‘Wheel’ were there for creative interpretation, some like ‘All the world’s a stage’ were pointing to specific things – and off trundled the competitors. We’d had a good afternoon a few weeks ago coming up with the clues, and I think those who took part enjoyed solving and finding them.

The best image of the day was a joint award, but Darren and I both liked James’s entry for ‘Lunch’, with the reflected cobbles aligning perfectly with the stainless steel shelves.

The next walk is in Richmond Park on 29th October, and following walks will all take place on the last Saturday of each month. There’s a great programme ready up until April, and I’ll be leading a walk early next year, so keep an eye out for details. All walks are free to join, and come with a friendly bunch of photographers to show you around.

I’ve written here about fireworks before, and how easy it actually is to take photos of them, so I won’t repeat myself. (Although I must admit, standing on Blackfriars Bridge, I had to check my own site on my phone to remind myself – a little bit rusty after nearly a year since Ally Pally!)

The display was fantastic. No matter how many times I go to a display on the Thames (and in my 5th year of living in London now, I’ve been to a few), I always love how the noise of the explosions bounce off the buildings either side of the river, resulting in a quite heart-pounding experience.

I particularly like the reflections in this shot, not only the reds beneath the fireworks, but the other ones: a subtle purple streak from the National Theatre, and another smudge of red from the Oxo tower. Also, unlike later shots, there’s not too much smoke. Unfortunately for us on Blackfriars Bridge, the wind was somewhat towards us, meaning later shots aren’t quite as tidy.

Harmony on Heels from Josh Blacker on Vimeo.

I promised video, and here it is – pretty much straight from the 5D mkII. No fancy camerawork, shot at 70mm, and two clips slapped together. Easy.

Given recent developments following the election, I figured it was about time I posted this image that I took on Sunday 2nd May, less than a week before Britain went to the polls. I’d been invited down to take some shots for Chuka Umunna, Labour’s (eventually successful) PPC for Streatham, for what was a bit of a surprise visit – I had my suspicions, but they weren’t confirmed until I arrived at the New Testament Church of God in Brixton  and saw all the live transmission vans outside.

While I don’t want this blog to be about anything more than my photography (I have other places to discuss my opinions on other matters), I will say this: the Prime Minister, as he was then, gave a thoroughly impassioned speech about his core values. Referencing the parable of the Good Samaritan and other biblical stories, he made the case for not passing by on the other side when we should be doing all we can to help others less fortunate than ourselves in this world. The next day he gave his speech to Citizens UK, and it was that Gordon Brown that I saw in Brixton.

Plus, it was quite fun to be in there with the couple of press photographers, being ushered to the front by aides and being let into the inner circle of what’s going on. That, and hearing people afterwards making sure they’d got the radio mic off him as he left for the car…

(On a technical note, I shot this event at ISO 3200, and the shots look like they’re at about 200. I haven’t even applied noise reduction in Lightroom. The 5D mkII still amazes me, even after a two months now.)

After a long week spent in Scotland with (mostly) glorious weather – more on which in a blog post soon – I came back to the downpour in London with over 1,000 frames to sort through and edit. What more could I want than to take even more photos of yet another event?

Thank goodness this one had my girlfriend in it…

Harmony on Heels are an all-female choir based in North London who sing quite fantastically; next time you get a chance, go and see them! I’ve got a little bit of video from the 5D mark II as well, which I’ll post soon.

Having two PPCs in one room isn’t particularly remarkable, especially as we draw ever closer to the much-expected May 6th general election date, but when one of them is the drummer from Blur, and the other has been described as ‘Britain’s Obama’, it becomes something a little more interesting.

This wasn’t the first time I’d come across Chuka Umunna, the Labour PPC for Streatham, and I doubt it’ll be the last, as he’s asked me several times recently to do some photography for him, but this time he had Dave Rowntree with him – who’s the Labour PPC in Westminster.

Both seem equally passionate about Labour, but Chuka comes across as – not unsurprisingly – more of a politician. Rowntree struck me as much more subdued (perhaps because he knows how hard it would be to win in his chosen constituency!), taking some time to become animated and engage with the audience as naturally as Chuka seems to.

The talk itself was interesting – taking place over lunchtime it was short, but the small lecture theatre made it something of an intimate setting. Both talked about their view of politics briefly, before spending the rest of the hour taking questions. Entertaining, informative and a britpop star. What more could you want from a Wednesday lunchtime?

Anyway, you can find more photos from the event in this Flickr set.

(The title of the post comes from the awful pun Chuka made in reply to one of Rowntree’s comments…)

Even though the UCLU Modo fashion society faced quite a few setbacks this year – their traditional venue within UCL was unavailable except at reading week, when no one would be around, and alternative venues were both ridiculously expensive and available for just one night, rather than their usual two, they pulled ‘The Green Fashion Show’ off spectacularly.

The Russell Hotel was a quite brilliant venue, and (from my point of view) the lighting was much better this year. Well, I say much better – I really mean there was some improvement. There was still a massive dark spot halfway down the runway, which happened to coincide with exactly where the models had been instructed to stop and pose… Luckily, the end of the runway was pretty well lit, and my new Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 wasn’t exactly unhelpful.

Unfortunately the for-one-night-only show this year meant I couldn’t cover both backstage and the runway, although I managed a few shots of models dressing and being made-up before the show started. Nor this year – it being a Sunday, when I was editing a whole bunch of shots from Celebrating Streatham – could I get a timelapse done of the set-up: being in an external venue for just one day meant a 6am start for the crew, and probably a similar finish the next morning!

I’ll get a gallery up when I’m not quite so busy – for now, this shot should suffice to illustrate what in the end was the best Modo show I’ve seen over the past four years.

Last night I went up to Alexandra Palace in north London for one of the city’s best displays. Because the Palace is on top of such a big hill, you get fantastic views across the city, and every now and then there’s a little burst of fireworks in the panorama in front of you, even before the main display starts. We managed to watch most of a display in Greenwich while walking back down, which puts the view into perspective.

It was a bit crowded – something like 50,000 people – and there was a bit of a mad rush after getting food and so on to get to a half decent spot, on a fairly steep slope. Luckily, with my brand spanking new Velbon Sherpa 250 tripod, this wasn’t much of an issue. I took plenty of photos during displays last year, so I wasn’t paying much attention to the camera this year, except to have a little experiment with zooming in and out during a shot at one point – you can see the half-decent result here.

Taking photos of fireworks is pretty simple, really – so long as you do have a tripod. The basics are:

• Manual settings!
• Low ISO for best colour reproduction and least noise
• Quite narrow aperture for depth of field – I was using f/11 most of the night – so it doesn’t really matter if your focusing is off.
• Long exposures. A lot of my shots were on 2.5″, although at times I went up to 15″. Try out various combinations for different effects, and find your own personal style.

I’m off to the Lord Mayor’s Fireworks on the Thames again next weekend, so expect more soon!

Things move a whole lot faster these days. The death of Michael Jackson was announced last night, and this evening saw a tribute flash mob at Liverpool Street station, inspired no doubt by previous mobs held there. Organised by Milo Yiannopoulos via twitter, his blog, facebook and various other places, the mob was too big for the station itself and the police directed us outside onto Liverpool Street itself.

After something of a shaky start – standing near the press photographers, it was clear they had no idea what was going on, and nor did a fair chunk of the crowd – speakers were set up and tunes played.

There was certainly disappointment when the police shut the mob down after only four songs – and there was little or no actual moonwalking to be had; in the cramped confines of Liverpool Street, amid (let’s say) 400 people, there wasn’t enough room, so most settled for singing along, moshing and hand-waving.

Big props to the hundreds of people who came out – except those that, at times when the crowd was getting excited, wondered if it was Michael Jackson arriving to reveal the whole thing had been a sick publicity stunt. Semi-funny, but ultimately in bad taste.

There’s a whole set on Flickr here, while you can listen to some of the singing and music on AudioBoo (having some trouble embedding the new player, so click through for now).