Are any of you readers old enough to remember when one of your parents friends, or maybe your cousins family would go on a trip and then have a slideshow of their photos? Maybe that was just a Utah thing? At any rate, what I am going to do here is (hopefully) a more entertaining version of that, weaving together photography information, techniques and some cool pictures... at least I think they are cool. That is why I chose to take them and spend the time to process them from RAW to finished product. I'm going to try to give a little background as to why we (my lovely lively wife and I) traveled, how we (mostly me as I planned the thing) chose where we went and what we liked about where we went. AND maybe give someone else a little help in planning their trip.

Why did we travel to England and Scotland? Both my wife and I have lots of family roots in Scotland. Also, I lived in Scotland for 2.4 ish years while going to Physiotherapy School in Aberdeen Scotland, my lovely girl friend, eventually lovely wife, never got to come visit me and I have long ached to show her where I was and how that affected me I have always been strongly affected by my environment in mood and  energy. Another reason? Why not? If you are going to take the trip of a lifetime, there are worse places to go.

My preparation started in Summer of 2023 when I got my new camera kit (you can read about that more in previous posts) and started learning the new camera and lenses. I carefully chose my bag and lens kit for maximum IQ with reasonable weight. I can admit that full frame is not the ideal system to use for reasonable weight, BUT I was not going to be able to afford something else afterwards, and I wanted a camera that could do the night, star trail, milky way photography that I wanted after I was back. That is part of the reason I chose the 28-105 "Kit" zoom lens instead of the 24-70 DFA* f2.8, and the 70-210 f4 instead of the 70-200 f2.8 lens. For my purposes the IQ is essentially identical and I don't miss the larger aperture as a landscape photographer very much. 

I then was on to the search for a bag to carry my stuff. I wanted something that did NOT scream CAMERA BAG to any thief looking for tourists to steal from. I considered many but chose this one: https://sunny16.com/products/the-voyager?srsltid=AfmBOorD3Qu6Utgx52dJk0XPIfjH-CLGsM1QMJzF_VEUVo9FedFOG-Z_

I am not convinced that I made the right choice, but it did keep my stuff protected and nothing got stolen or lost. It was a bit heavy and awkward and actually bigger (Thicker) than I wanted but it sufficed. I will post about the bag in some future post I think, but not today.

The first travel plan was booking a flight, Delta has a direct flight to London from SLC, so that was a no brainer, we chose to upgrade to the Comfort + one step below first class, not because we are rich, but because I could not contemplate the lack of seat recline and knee room when I was going to be on a plane for a 10 hour flight with an hour or so ground time at least before and after. That settled, what to do about getting to Scotland from London. I felt that a few days to adjust to the jet lag and explore London would be a wise idea, lovely wife concurred. So we got a hotel for Monday-Wednesday nights planning to take an overnight sleeper train to Aberdeen on Thursday. This Train: https://www.sleeper.scot/ I cannot say enough about how I enjoyed this train experience, waking up and eating an early breakfast in the dining car watching the fields of sheep and cattle out one window and looking at the North Sea out the other. We chose the ensuite with bunkbeds just to keep from jostling each other too much during the night.

Now to the photography part of London, warning it will take several posts to cover London, too many photos. That said, After getting to the hotel (Pro Tip, use a cab, don't try to walk from the tube even if it is a half mile, just learn how to get a cab and get one) I took a quick nap and left my wife relaxing at the hotel to go and take some photographs. We stayed in Westminster at the Belgrave Hotel https://maps.app.goo.gl/zuxM6xPBsMBEmKFM9 It was decent and reasonably priced, and not too far from Westminster Cathedral (Not the Abbey). Walking there I glimpsed its romanesque exterior through a gap in the trees, quickly realizing that with the broken cloud and frequent patches of shade lighting was going to be challenging, this persisted through the entire trip and I learned a lot about shadow and highlight adjustments in Photoshop working through these photos. This shot was taken at 48mm with the kit lens at f8, which is typically the sharpest f-stop for this type of lens and where I keep it unless the situation demands it. The tricky part of this shot came during processing it, due to perspective. I was not straight on to any one side and the camera was angled upwards.  I tried to find the right balance of straightening, perspective correction and rotation to make the image seem as natural as possible. It is interesting how much your eyes compensate for perspective on a regular basis, and you don't notice it until you take a picture. Try it, walk up close to a building step off to the side and make your cell phone camera zoom as wide as it will go. Look at the picture then the building right in front of you.

Arriving at the front, of the building I was looking for a unique, or at least interesting shot, the 28mm end of the kit lens not being nearly wide enough I replaced it with my 15-30 f2.8. 15mm on full frame is quite wide and allows for you to get close to an object, place it in the context of the setting tell a story of some kind. You can see the perspective looking up at the building, I corrected it a little but focused more on getting the image straight/level and bringing up the shadows, as the sky was quite a bit brighter than the building. I loved the people chatting and the pigeons hanging out, they seemed rather less impressed with the building than I was. 

Moving closer allowed me to turn the camera to landscape position and emphasize the entrance ornateness and complexity of the decoration. Again the shadow on the building against the brighter sky but I was able to get what I wanted out of it. The sensor in the K1 is marvelous and has so much depth in the data that you can expose for the bright parts and bring up the shadows amazingly well. 

Just down the street on my way to Westminster Abbey,  I managed to remember one of my rules in the city "Look UP!" Seeing this building and seeing the potential, I did just that. I love the lines and the reflected sky. This was again at 15mm and f8 which at that focal length gives nearly unlimited depth of field. What do you think?

I will end the first afternoon here, I want to talk about Westminster Abbey in a separate post. Thanks for reading!