Saturday, January 12, 2008

Christmas roundup

A few more pictures to get back up to date with the Christmas break back in the UK.

I mentioned in a post a week or so back that I'd been with a friend to the South Bank to see a couple of exhibitions. The usual skateboarders and bikers were falling off their respective pieces of equipment in the concrete playground by the side of the river. There was however one guy who seemed to be consistently not falling over and he gave me a chance to try some shots in the shade at high speed. With a bit of playing around I got this image:
IMG_4543
The next day, the changing of the guards at Buckingham palace drew a huge crowd, and I'm still unsure if I missed seeing the Queen by a matter of minutes. Anyway, in one of the doorways of the palace I spotted this royal pair who were clearly interested in taking my photo:
IMG_4577
For New Year's Eve I was back in London and we headed for the London Eye to get prime viewing position for the fireworks. Waterloo was mayhem and there were apparently 700,000 people out on the streets for the event. The fireworks were spectacular and the slight drizzle didn't put a damper on the atmosphere:
fireworks1
manonbridge2
Next week I head to Madrid for a couple of days before going on to the winter string school in CERN which I'm thoroughly looking forward to. I hope to report on some physics from the school - there will be a working group on AdS/CFT with flavour.

4 comments:

Benjamin said...

Just popped in to catch up. You're really excelling at the photography. Some beautiful shots, lovely to see.

Unknown said...

Cheers Ben, the camera is still a joy to use and occasionally I'm pretty pleased with the results. The results that pleased me a few months ago look less and less pleasing, but such is the learning process. I hope that I will feel the same way in another few months about what I'm producing now.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jon,
It was so lovely to see you at Christmas. Sorry about the vomiting virus, though it seems like we may have caught it from you dad anyway so blame him.
I've just been thinking of loads of questions I would respect your answers for.
1) Do you think that extra-terrestrial life is likely?
2)What is the smallest galaxy there is?
3)Can you explain what happened before time started?
Thanks for trying to explain string theory to my sister. It made for a very entertaining evening!
Lots of love and Merry Channukah.
Clare, Alastair and Douglas
xxx

Unknown said...

Hi Clare,

It was a lovely evening and great to finally meet Douglas. I'm sorry that we all ended up with the lurgy but it did make for a quiet Christmas!

Great questions and I look forward to answering them in a post. At the moment I'm at CERN, in Geneva, working with my collaborator who I haven't seen in a year and a half. Lots to do in the week here but after that I'll answer your questions ASAP :-)

All the best,

J x