A Day at the Tate Britain

It's been a cold but sunny day so I decided to go out to do some photography since this comes too short during the week. The plan was to walk around Battersea Park and then around Victoria.

I took the Epson RD-1 with the Ricoh GR lens along and started off in Battersea Park but the ended up near the Tate Britain museum.

I have been to the Tate Modern many times, just because it's close to the City and I like the building it's in more than the art there. To the Tate Britain on the other hand, I've only been once before.

Since I had time and it was warmer inside once the sun started to go down, I figured it's a good opportunity for a walk around the museum.

I spent quite a long time walking around but less to take in the art and more to take photos of the people doing so.

It was very nice and I need to do more series in museums around London, especially now when it's cold and rainy outside and with the museums being free it's a inexpensive day out.

Day 131 - Museum of Ethnology

The rain held up and the temperatures dropped to almost London level, the best thing to do with the day is to go to a museum and the Museum of Ethnology came highly recommended.

And indeed it's not only a very nice museum about all the different people living in Vietnam but also provides the ability to visit traditional houses and see a free Water Puppet show.

It is a bit out of the way so not really walking distance from most other sights but well worth the trip there.

Since the traditional houses are outside as is the Water Puppet Theater a nice day would make the visit more enjoyable but it was still  ice to walk around and see everything outside and inside.

The plan was to drive to Sapa tomorrow morning but they just had quite a lot of snow there and the rain is supposed to last for another day here. Since it's no fun to drive in the rain on a motorbike, I will decide in the morning to maybe stay another day in Hanoi before heading onward.

Day 57 - Back in Hanoi

After another night's sleep on a pretty hard 'soft sleeper' berth in the train from Sapa, I arrived in Hanoi early morning.

The weather was great, sunny and warm but not too humid so bearable for walking around. I did plenty of this mostly to enjoy the atmosphere of the city so my photography was taking a back-seat.

I did go to the Military Museum though and went through the exhibition mostly thinking about the song 'WAR'.
Looking at all the now useless metal of planes shot down or tanks captured you have to wonder what was this really good for other than waste a lot of money for producing scrap metal.
At least some of it makes for nice displays.

In the evening it was just chilling and then heading out for some karaoke and in to a club, the club stay was rather short as I am too old for the loud music. ;)

I was supposed to head on to Hue this evening but decided to stay another day in Hanoi or maybe head to Halong Bay after. There are lots of options so the question will be which on do I go for.
This is a question I will ponder in the morning so all I know now is that I will be in Hanoi tomorrow.

Solving the Puzzle

GR, f2.8, 1/60, ISO 200, RAW

Took this in the Greenwich museum during a walk today. I liked the light and how the kids were standing opposite each other. The GR captured the colours very well.

Louwman Visit

If you're in Den Haag and have at least a slight interest in cars, you should visit the Louwman Museum. Even if you don't have interest in cars but just want to have a coffee in a cool setting you should still go for a visit. I don't normally like going to museums when the weather is nice as it feels like I am missing out by being inside but the visit to the Louwman was worth it.

I decided to post a series of pictures from it, trying to be as varied as possible when taking into account that I was taking pictures of cars in a museum. The pictures are taken both with the Gr and the Heliar 15mm lens, which performed extremely well despite the low light in the halls but the wide angle and extra DOF sure came in handy. All pictures processed on the Nexus 7 using Photo Mate, a RAW developer which quickly manages to surpass even RAW Therapee for quality but also ease of use.

At the Museum

GRD, f3.5, 1/250, ISO 400, JPG b&w

Saatchi Portraits

There won't be any update on my blog tomorrow, this is the only day I will take off from posting anything so I decided to have a slightly longer than usual series. Following Yesbuts' recommendation I went to see the new Saatchi Gallery in London today and see the exhibitions. It was very interesting and well worth the visit. I tok quite a few pictures but realized that most are portraits so I decided to post a full series based on this.
This month's Ricohforum contest theme is also Portraits. While I don't think I will use any of these pictures for the contest it makes a change from my usual pictures. All are taken with the GX200 in RAW mode at various ISOs but it's mainly between 64 and 400.

On a side note, there is also a new firmware available for the Ricoh GRD II you can download it from here. I already installed it and the new "shutter priority" mode is very nice and should come in handy.
Finally, it also has a moving AF target but no AE target? This is something Ricoh implemented since the R8 in cameras except in the GR series. I still don't understand why it hasn't been implemented fuly like in the other cameras, afterall the GRD II is the flagship camera. Still, good to see another firmware update for the GRD II.