Completing Barbican

I think Barbican is a Marmite sort of place; people either love it or hate it. Personally I love it, and if I won the lottery, but not enough to stop working, then I would consider buying a flat in the Barbican and for use during the working week. Having said that I am glad to have completed photographing the Barbican for various reasons 1) Few of the "streets or walkways are on Google Maps, some are on Bing Maps, but neither is complete and neither is the sum of the two. This makes marking off progress difficult 2)  Being concentrated in the same small area for a while made me feel that I wasn't making much progress 3) It was becoming difficult to find new angles from which to photograph vast amounts of concrete. I do however think that the estate is very photogenic and will probably go back some time to photograph it again, but it was becoming a bit of a chore. Anyway on with the photographs..

First up is Moor Lane (which I had previously photographed), although the lane is actually not visible as it is below what is seen in the shot. The image was taken from Willoughby Highwalk and shows Moorfields Highwalk making its way through an old 60's looking building that looks to have been vacant for a while.

Silk Street joins onto Moor Lane, and at the end of Silk Street is Cromwell Place right below the imposing Cromwell Tower.

At the end of Beech Street, within the estate is Lauderdale Place. I struggled for a while to get a picture here, but in the end I really like what I came away with; a simple shot, but with lots of lines, patterns and angles.

Back up on to the highwalks and John Trimble Highwalk. The area below is Lauderdale place and the grate and staircase to the right are those in the picture aboce.

Close by is White Lyon Court, which is more like a ramp, leading down towards the now closed YMCA building.

And Finally Beech Gardens. I waited here for a while for someone interesting to come into shot, and after a few minutes was rewarded with two construction workers pushing wheel barrows, one of them containing a traffic cone.

Bye Barbican.

Asking A Stranger Twice

One of the things I wanted to be achieve from this project, was to build up a bit of confidence in asking people if I could take their picture - well this week I asked two people and neither objected. Hooray. It was more a case of them happening to be in the picture rather than them being the picture, but I still  felt the need to ask, and had the confidence to do so.

I again decided to start my journey home from Moorgate and fill in a few of the streets around there. First up was Circus Place, which is just off London Wall and leads onto Finsbury Circus. This is the second time I have tried to get good shots of these two places and failed. Circus Place is a short street with not a lot on it, so this shot will have to do, but I will try again at Finsbury Circus another day.

Directly behind Moorgate is Moorfields. There is a lot of development near the station at the moment, and I spotted this construction worker in the closed up shop window; I was drawn to the colour of his gear matching that of the writing in the window.. He was my fist success, when asking if he minded me taking his picture,

At the north end of Moorfields is Ropemaker Street. The following picture is from under the porch of the CityPoint building, built in 1967 and renovated in 2000.

Further down Ropemaker street at the junction with Moor Lane and Milton Court, I took the following picture - nobody quite walked where I wanted them to, perhaps they thought they were getting in my picture.

Milton Court, is I think, a new street, houses a new building for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, but that isn't what I photographed (though perhaps should have). Instead, I liked the reflections of the building seen here, and this lady was the second persons whom I asked if I could take her picture. She was very obliging and I told her a little about this project. The building in the reflection, is I believe the new Guildhall school of Music and Drama building mentioned above.

Round the corner is Moor Lane.

Still on Moor Lane, or at least above,  we come to the of the Barbican Centre and Willoughby Highwalk. I think there may be a lot of walkways in the Barbican, which probably don't count as as streets as such, but do count according to my definition given in an earlier post. I think it will be very interesting to explore the Barbican, so hope to include if further in the future.