Shepherds Bush

Farewell to London

/ mikeosbornphoto / 16 Comments

After living in London for more than 16 years, it’s time to say goodbye. I’m heading north to Manchester for fresh challenges and a whole new hinterland for photography.

I’ve been looking back over thousands of photographs taken in this city over the past five years, meaning much of my time here is locked in memories. This tiny fraction of images touches upon London’s scale and grand architecture – and places I’ve spent many hours in or passed by so many times. A goodbye here is a hello elsewhere – see you again soon from pastures new.

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Lease of life

/ mikeosbornphoto / 9 Comments

Spring is arriving with a stutter here in west London. The sun has been shining, but a piercing wind from the far north killing the benefits. But in my neighbourhood, the trees have blossomed and started to drop their delicate cargo. In our community garden, a robust clump of Euphorbia is radiating its yellow bounty along with other signs of life and flowers (including a plant I’m unable to identify). If Spring is here, can summer be far away?

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Shepherds skies

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Big skies are usually associated with rolling, empty country. But you can also find them here in my inner city west London neighbourhood.

One sky is currently filled with cranes, nestled around the former BBC Television Centre building site. And in a single day there was dramatic cloud cover and piercing clear blue. And from my own roof space I captured a huge sweep of travelling clouds and a fiercely beautiful sunset. Is the sky big no matter where you are?

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Angered warmth

The Photo Shop

West is east

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Damasgate signage

Welcome to my neighbourhood in west London. Uxbridge Road in Shepherd’s Bush is a vibrant thoroughfare lined with shops, always thronging with people and filled with the oxygen of everyday life. It’s a multicultural district embracing people from around the world. A glance at some of the shop fronts reveal that the Middle East has left an impression on the area, with elegant signs in Arabic and colourful displays of produce.

In the midst of this is the stately blue of Bush Hall, a music venue with 19th century roots which sits next to the local mosque. Walk further down the road and find a small group of Somali shops, Polish supermarkets, Syrian restaurants, coffee shops, clothes stores – an entire urban community.

Enjoy this pen portrait of just one absorbing London street.

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Syrian bakery

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Moving sky

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Gallery entrance

I look at the summer skies over my home in Shepherds Bush, west London, every day. Clouds fly across cobalt blue and rich dusky sunsets happen on even bad weather days.

My aim was to capture some of this movement, using a tripod and a neutral density (ND) filter. This keeps out most of the light and enables you to lengthen exposures even in bright conditions. This was just a stuttering start to show some of the motion of the clouds. The result appears milky and quite blurry, while foreground objects – such as a pigeon graciously sitting on an aerial mast – retain their clarity.

I haven’t decided whether I like the motion blur effect, or if it would be more impressive with a much bigger sky and very long exposures. Time to experiment further, I think…

Evening rush hour

Moving sky

The photo below was a regular exposure, but sky porn too good not to include, with its smoky pink puffs of cloud and aircraft trails picked out by a blazing evening sun.

Trailing the pink