Tag Archives: uk
Canary Wharf

Canary Wharf

by R.I. Pienaar on 12. Sep, 2004 in Photography

I first came to London in March 2000, we had offices in 1 Canada Square which is the tallest building in Europe at the moment. It was the first building to be built on the Canary Wharf estate. I took a couple of photos with my Epson PhotoPC 600 of the area.
When I discovered these photos again a couple of nights ago I had a look for other old photos around Canary Wharf and found one I took in 2002 from roughly the same angle as the earlier one but just from further away. The 2002 photo was taken with my Olympus C3000 Zoom camera.
Today I went back to the same spot and took another shot with my new camera. Unfortunately I cannot go to the same place as the 2000 photo since there is now a modern flat complex.
The full entry has the 3 photos for a comparison of the growth of this area.

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Midland Grand Hotel

Midland Grand Hotel

by R.I. Pienaar on 11. Sep, 2004 in Photography

Attached to St. Pancras station in London is a huge victorian Gothic style building, it is the old hotel that was operated by the Midlands Railway. Eventually when the hotel closed it became offices and now its empty but listed as a Grade 1 historic building.

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Fountain Square

Fountain Square

by R.I. Pienaar on 05. Sep, 2004 in Photography

I went to drop someone off at Victoria Coach Station today, on the way there we walked through a little mall called Fountain Square, at first I thought its pretty grimy and dirty but on the way back I took another look and noticed it was actually a pretty kewl place. I took a couple of photos that can be seen here.

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Funfair

Funfair

by R.I. Pienaar on 30. Aug, 2004 in Photography

I have been looking for an opportunity to test out my new Nikon SB-800 Speedlight. The Funfair came to Blackheath again for the long weekend and this was the perfect opportunity to freeze some action on fast moving subjects.
The results of my outing can be seen in this collection of 8 photos, some cliche’d spinning wheels of color here and some nice shots of people having fun on the rides.


The SB-800 is a fantastic flash with full remote mode, can command a whole lot of other flashes and is very very powerful. It was designed for the D70, along with its smaller sister product the SB-600 it makes a very good addition to the D70.

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Norwich Cathedral

Norwich Cathedral

by R.I. Pienaar on 10. Aug, 2004 in Photography

Norwich Cathedral was built from 1096 to 1101, it was built using stone brought from Normandy. Between 1121 and 1145 the Nave was built and the present spire – the second highest in England – was added between 1356 and 1369. It is a magnificent building with a lot of unique features like its roof bosses – 100s of small figures that is scattered all over the ceiling.
I took this photo while I was there last week hoping to show the character and presence in this great building. I edited it quite a bit to remove various people and objects from the scene to get this completely empty shot, click on the image for a larger copy.

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The Scientific Anglian

The Scientific Anglian

by R.I. Pienaar on 05. Aug, 2004 in Photography

I spent 2 days in Norwich this week, it is a great place. Not too big, not too small but filled with history. It has a fantastic Castle and Cathedral built with rock from Normandy almost a 1000 years ago. It is almost impossible to look in any direction without seeing a few big old churches – today it has more than 35 large churches, it had 52 at some point.
Many of these are closed due to the decline in church going folk, turned into book shops, museums or galleries. I have some good photos of some of these churches that I will put up here in the next few days. Apart from all this ancient history there is also a lot of really characterful locations throughout the city. The photo here is from a old book shop called The Scientific Anglian, as far as I can find out it was forced to close down when the owner could not afford the alterations that was needed to comply with a new set of health and safety laws.

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The Mission, NFD and The Faces of Sarah

by R.I. Pienaar on 03. Aug, 2004 in Front Page

Tonight I saw The Mission in Norwich and as always they were FANTASTIC, I really liked this gig they had a good atmosphere however their set was much shorted than the previous ones I have been to. They were supported by 2 bands, The Faces of Sarah and NFD.
NFD is the reason I took time off work, came to Norwich, paid a hotel and it was absolutely worth every second of it. NFD is better known as Fields of The Nephilim, they have reformed under a new name now. Their new album is due out in October and if tonights set is anything to go by it is going to be fantastic. The music is as powerful as I remember it, was a real step back into almost 10 years listening to them tonight. They finished the set with an absolutely amazing version of Psychonaut and it fit in perfectly with their new music, which should give anyone who know them a good idea of what is to come!
The Faces of Sarah was a very big surprise, they were also very good and you can see they take inspiration from Fields and a few other bands, they were great, together with NFD they really set the bar very high for The Mission.
UPDATE: I have uploaded some photos from the gig here, these were taken with my little Canon iXus.

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Boycotting HMV

by R.I. Pienaar on 01. Oct, 2003 in Rantings

2 weekends ago we went to the HMV in Canary Wharf after going to see the new – hugely disappointing – extension they made to Canary Wharf. HMV had a 3-for-20 special on CDs and for once they had something worth buying.
My SO chose her 3 CD’s and went to the till to pay where we were informed that one of the CD’s were not part of the promotion even though it a) were in the specials rack b) had the sticker on it showing it is.

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Tube Rage

by R.I. Pienaar on 29. Sep, 2003 in Front Page

After spending Saterday going to Camden and having to do the usual bashing and bumping to actually leave the tube I thought this was a very good Haiku that I saw on Going Underground’s Blog

Let people out first
Not “charge through the doors first thing”!
Die, you bastards, die.

I took the bus home via Piccadilli and picked up a copy of Content Syndication using RSS instead of doing that again.

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UK ADSL Coverage

by R.I. Pienaar on 10. Sep, 2003 in Front Page

The Register has an article stating that BT claims 80% of homes in the UK can now get ADSL broadband internet.
“This month we’ll have as many people connected to exchanges offering broadband as can switch on their mains gas cooker to make the supper,”
I am moving house next month, and as always I am absolutely paranoid about not having ADSL coverage in my area, it is just not conceivable that I would need to spend even 1 week without a fast reliable Internet connection, I don’t know how I ever managed without it.

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