I should be asleep. I should, by rights, be exhausted, because it's been a long week of too-ing and fro-ing and I seem to have not stopped for any decent length of time, unless it's when I've been asleep, which hasn't been much.

Anyway, back from London, done a couple of days work (but disjointedly because of all the travel and the having to take the car to be MOT'd and the lots of travel that that involved because, well, free MOTs are good but having them at garages a long way from home isn't) and now I'm off for another day to attend the wedding of a friend. Camera will be coming with me at friend's request, so I'm viewing it as part wedding, part chance to see if weddings would be something I could enjoy shooting.

I've uploaded some of my work from the Bert Stephani workshop to Flickr. I can't say that I'm entirely happy with it; I think I let my nerves get the better of me at times and that's something I need to work hard at getting over. Nevertheless there's some decent stuff in there. The pool of everyone's work  has lots of stuff that's much better than mine (and I'll bet we're all saying that).

Anyway, a slideshow:

And now a bed for me to fall into. 

Aha, so the Starbucks opposite Richmond station does have wi-fi. It's just the one further down the road that is made entirely out of fail.

Stream-of-consciousness tumblogging again this morning as I'm about to head off for day two of Bert's workshop. Today we're going to be shooting in and around Richmond's parks, archways and alleyways, trying to put into practice what we learned yesterday (but possibly without Paris or the horse's head). Later on we might be headed to Canary Wharf, assuming that the bureaucratic gods have been placated.

I'm feeling astoundingly creative at the moment. I wrote a poem and two story outlines on the train back from Waterloo to Richmond last night (so much more comfortable than the tube). I wonder what it is about London that makes my brain work this way.

Anyway, caffeine has been consumed. I'm off to shoot some frames. Might upload some frames tonight (I've been shooting RAW, but I figured that RAW+basic would allow me to show off before doing any editing, which, let's face it, isn't exactly what a netbook screen was designed for).

Okay, so that wasn't as tumblr-ish as I expected. Must do better next time. 

First and foremost: A pox on Starbucks that don't have wifi. It's just not on, people. A man needs his connection to the interwubs.

I'm writing this in a Starbucks in Richmond, which, as you might have gathered, doesn't have any wifi. You'll be getting this via the wonderful medium of a tethered N95 (because Nokia phones still have to be good for something these days). This may prove to be expensive, but I wanted to write this up before I forgot and I didn't want to find myself seeing the post lying around on my hard drive when I got home and it was no longer relevant. My stream of consciousness, let me show you it.

I've spent today at the first day of Bert Stephani's London lighting workshop. It's been interesting, to say the least. I've watched Bert shoot portraits of Angela Merkel, and of a horses head and Paris Hilton, no less¹. So far the course has mostly confirmed stuff that I already knew, or sort of knew, but wasn't confident enough to believe in. Above all, today has reinforced in me the notion of taking time to set up - you might only get ten minutes with a subject, but that doesn't mean that you can't spend an hour setting up beforehand and getting the lights just so, so that when your subject arrives all you need to do is explore the setup you've already created.

Tomorrow we're moving on to doing some assignment work in teams of three, which should be fun. There may even be a shooting permit for Canary Wharf in the offing (apparently it's approved, but Callum Winton, who organised the workshop, was having to pester a bureaucrat for it, last I heard.

So, fun and games with the larnin' then, and looking forward to tomorrow. I would post photos, but I value my phone bill being manageable for the rest of the month. Tomorrow, I shall find a wifi hotspot that actually works. Right now, though, I'm going to go find me some vittles.

¹Yes, some of this might not be entirely accurate. I'll leave you to be the judge of which bits are true or not.

I had a long and involved conversation with my friend Michelle last night about the nature of consciousness, the existence of free will and the need for a story to be happy (or at least not entirely bleak) before it gets bleak.

I'll expand on these later (if I remember) but I'm now heading off to the first day of Bert Stephani's London workshop, and am insanely excited. 

I think I've mentioned it before, but on the 7th and 8th of September I'll be attending Bert Stephani's lighting workshop, as organised by Callum Winton.

Callum sent the following out by email today:

The not quite so good news is that of the 25 workshop places, we currently have just 11 people that have signed up due to it being mid-week and at the end of the holiday season.

But the good news is that, although Bert said we need 16 people as a minimum, he really wanted to come to the UK for our workshop and so he's booked his flight today He may have to bring a tent rather than stay in a hotel for a couple of days, but the workshop is on (woohoo!).

So, if you're a photographer and you fancy being part of this (take a look at LIME for reasons why you might), head on over to Callum's site and sign up.

If you do decide to sign up, there's a bonus for me, too...

The bonus for you will be that, if someone signs up and gives your name as their referrer, then we'll give you £30 off your own registration fee.

So, feel free to sign up and mention my name while you're at it!

I hope I'll see you there.