now it's getting interesting

Maybe it's because we had such a cold rainy spell, but here in London it feels like we've finally burst thru - as have the flowers. With a vengeance. These shots are from last week, when it was still cold enough that we had to struggle creatively to peel away the layers without catching a cold (I failed, obviously).



These sweet girls from Turkey, I feel, got it just right. I did posed shots as well but I like this random one when they didn't know why I was shooting them. This week, we've reached enough warmth that everyone is looking fabulous.

Going back to the Serpentine now, cupcakes, so if you're there and you see me (Breton top, Ray Bans, brown hair, Canon round my neck) come up & say hello: you, too, could be Dotted.

tangerine dream

We were hanging out by the Serpentine on a recent Sunday and it was getting time to head back and eat dinner & watch the Wire which we've been addicted to (we're nearly done!). The sky was getting dark and balmy, like it could storm, and suddenly Hyde Park felt like Jamaica.
Right on cue, I saw this girl from a distance, inside the gated part of the Diana fountain thing that caused so much trouble for years but which they might just have finally got right. She was on the phone as if helping a friend find her, but you really couldn't miss her. I don't have a telephoto lens so settled for leaning over the fence and taking one quick snap (didn't want to hold Mr. Dot up, he gets so impatient). While still at a brisk pace, I tossed my card over the fence. It must have seemed weird someone taking your picture and throwing things at you - but hopefully, mystery girl, whoever you are, please get in touch and tell me where you got that great orange and brown zig zag kaftan. It's fabulous.

meet the maddoffs

We were strolling thru the park and I noticed this couple - not, as you'd assume, because of the pattern of her top (I truly don't have a polka dot 'thing' - it's just a nickname) but because she was barefoot. I walk barefoot on the grass all the time but once I'm on Rotton Row, it's sandals back on.
So I asked to shoot them & they were cool about it, but when I asked where they were from, they just laughed mysteriously (they had those kind of foreign accents you hear in films: usually by British actors). So, this being England, I didn't want to pry.

As we walked off we couldn't help but speculate: is it an imigration issue? Witness protection program? Are they perhaps the Maddoffs, with a new identity? Did I say something that is very funny in their country? Or was something perhaps lost in translation?

a paris state of mind

This isn't Paris: it's Rotten Row, in Hyde Park, and the model is a charming American girl studying here, who was strolling with her very lovely parents. They used to say only Parisian women knew how to tie a scarf, but this being a global world, clearly the rest of us are getting the hang of it.

it's a bird...

I was in Hyde Park, shooting the first roses about to bloom, when I saw this woman struggling to set up a self portrait by balancing it on the railings. She spoke no English, so I have no idea where she got her fabulous boots, or that great grey felt skirt (so Joseph Beuys.) Just as I clicked the shutter, a pigeon flew past, the same dove grey as her skirt.