Photowalk around Covent Garden and 7 Dials with Maplin

What do you get when you take a bunch of bloggers on a photowalk? See the results below.

Maplin organised this afternoon for us, lead by a photographer, to do some street photography.

Tips we learnt on the day :

When taking pictures of crowds, try and frame it with some people in the foreground.
Use leading lines in your photos to draw the eye, like road, paths and other structures.
Symmetry – use of symmetry is quite tricky but can work quite well, but experiment

Other than that, just take lots of pics. So I did. I took over 200 photos. Here are some of the better photos from the day. I tend to take a lot of photos when I do restaurant reviews or go on a trip. I can end up with over 2000 shots after a weekend away. This is a combination of using my phone, my Sony RX1000V camera, and also my video camera. I now use a new memory card for every trip in case they fail. I always run out of space for storage so to avoid this happening in the middle of the trip, extra cards are always on hand. Maplin has a large selection of storage available, check them out here.

I always download these photos to my hard drive and keep a couple of backups online via Google Photos and One Drive. I also have a portable hard drive where I back up my computer hard drive. These are not that reliable as I had one fail on me last year with over 500gbs of content lost. So a lot of trips and events that were recorded are now lost forever. My choice for external hard drives is the small and compact WD passport. Tip: get as much storage as you can with USB 3 connections.

Attempting some symmetry

Taking pictures of crowds, but from behind, no faces.

Attempting to frame him with the arch behind

Human statues on a break

Catching a moment – How does he do that?

Attempting something, symmetry/ leading lines/ something?

Rickshaw in Covent Garden

That picture of Neals’ Yard that is all over Instagram

Framing? Not sure. Might need cropping.

A gaggle of bloggers in Chinatown

Attempting to take a picture of roast ducks hanging in the window but foiled by the reflection. It seems you need some special lenses for this.

A touristy shot of the new gate in Chinatown

Chinatown Gate, an artistic view

Trying to take the glass bridge but framed by the other buildings

A styled Instagram blogger stride by shot

Antoehr stride by, Covent Garden Hotel

Alternative View of the Chinatown Gate

Afternoon Tea at Birgid’s Bakery

The Photowalk was followed by Afternoon Tea at B’s Bakery in Covent Garden. Loads of cakes, some sandwiches, and scones with clotted cream, all served on very pretty floral crockery. Very instagrammable. It was a bit tricky for photos as we sat in the very dim basement. The table was lit with little table lamps. So all the photos were a bit dull. You can see the result below with no post production.

The afternoon tea itself was nice but not something to swoon about. I did like the smoked salmon sandwich in the pink bun. There were a lot of cakes and my favourite was the lemon meringue tart. I still prefer the afternoon teas I had at Cake Boy and Barbecoa recently and at the nice London hotels, for about the same price too.

It seems to be quite a popular place as it was very busy upstairs. If you want to visit and instagram the cakes, make sure you get a table upstairs.