Happy New Year, all.

I need to get a pile of film processed from over the Christmas period before I can fully wrap up the year, but as I’m waiting on that I still have some photos to share from London.

With some encouragement from Robyn, I travelled down to Brighton for a solo long birthday weekend as Vincent Vocoder Voice had announced a rare gig.

Unfortunately though, they cancelled. Gutted.

What to do? Just fucking go anyway, I guess.

*easyJet sunrise, in… black and white || Leica M6 + Nokton 35 1.4 MC + Kentmere 100 (pushed to 800)*

*Gatwick Airport, but liminal || Leica M6 + Nokton 35 1.4 MC + Kentmere 100 (pushed to 800)*

*Brighton Railway Station || Leica M6 + Nokton 35 1.4 MC + Kentmere 100 (pushed to 800)*

My base was Brighton, but I figured I’d just walk around London and make up for the disaster that was my trip to Dublin the year prior.

And make up for it I did. The first day alone I clocked something like 30,000 steps.

*“replace the word art with freedom to do things”, London || Leica M6 + Nokton 35 1.4 MC + Kentmere 100 (pushed to 800)*

I met Álex in the City of London area to pick up the Hasselblad XPan, which is somewhat of a ‘dream camera’ for me.

Quickly for anyone who doesn’t know, one panoramic photo on the Xpan is like stitching two regular photos on a 35mm camera together.

The results don’t exactly lend themselves to a portrait orientation on a mobile device, and benefit being viewed fullscreen… but here we are.

*Hasselblad XPan + 90mm f4 + Kentmere 400 (pushed to 3200)*

*Leica M6 + Nokton 35 1.4 MC + Kentmere 100 (pushed to 800)*

The main spot I wanted to hit up was the Barbican.

I’ve visited London a few times over the years, and even lived near by for a little but I never managed to see it, so I made sure it was the first place to visit.

It felt like a good opportunity to try the XPan, so I burned through a roll of Kentmere 400.

I feel like some of these photos are okay, but I was definitely suffering my usual mental hurdle of being somewhere new and feeling rushed (a pressure I entirely put on myself, for reasons unknown).

Oftentimes struggling to find a composition that I like and work it.

*Hasselblad XPan + 45mm f4 + Kentmere 400 (pushed to 3200)*

I did spend a good couple of hours there, but it really wasn’t enough.

And while dull light can be a vibe, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping to get some harsh winter light and strong shadows.

Something I am trying to do more going into 2025 is meet up with other photographers that I know online. It’s good to put a real life face to an avatar/body of work, and I want to move away from being on social media and reliant on Meta and co. as much as I can.

Tom swung by the Barbican to shoot some photos. He’s recently picked up a Leica M10-R and is fully getting into the rangefinder swing of things. We kicked about for a good hour.

This football court is surrounded by 2,000 homes in the estate, and I was suprised to see just the one person playing football.

I suspected that shooting the XPan in portrait would have the resulting image feel gangly. I prefer a 4x3 crop on portrait photos, but you gotta try something new once in a while.

I have no idea how the blog will handle sharing this, but let’s see…

Ridiculous.

Anyway, that’s it for the Barbican. Had I not been aware of how much ground I wanted to cover during the rest of the day, I could probably have spent the full day there.

I’ll definitely be back to try again!

I spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly and taking photos.

The photos are nothing to write home about due to reasons mentioned above, but I was at least just enjoying being out.

I cut about, meandering through different pockets of the city.

I swung by Bayeux Lab to collect a roll of E6 that I’d posted down for them to process, and even got a nice wee tour behind the scenes.

I was about to leave and realised it was too dark to finish the roll I had in the M6, so I picked up some HP5 from them on my way out and pushed it to 3200 in the Leitz Minolta CL.

*Leitz Minotla CL + Nokton 35 1.4 MC + HP5 (pushed to 3200)*

After walking through China Town and Leicester Square, I stumbled upon a christmas choir at Trafalgar Square.

I walked along the Thames for a while in the vague direction of where I needed to catch the train. It was at this point I’d become aware of how far I’d walked, and my feet were starting to feel it. This trip was probably the end of my trainers.

Ian is a friend from back in Scarborough. We both left the town in the same year and went opposite ways. London for him, Glasgow for me.

We generally see each other once a year at a friends place in Scarborough over Christmas, but as we weren’t going to be in Scarborough this time I dropped him a last minute message to see if he fancied a meal somewhere. And Ian being Ian, he showed up. No hassle.

The lens on the XPan only opens up to f4. Not generally an issue for me, as I don’t tend to shoot wide open often but when it comes to low light I figured there was no way this portrait was gonna work out. But I tried anyway.

Lit by street light at 1/15th of a second. I’m pleasantly surprised that it worked, and it might actually be my favourite photo of the trip!

And that’s it. I feel like this trip has opened London up to me in a new way, and I’m already keen to go back and to take Robyn along too!

*Train poo || Leitz Minotla CL + Nokton 35 1.4 MC + HP5 (pushed to 3200)*

All film Dev & Scanned at Gulabi in Glasgow.

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