Busiest shopping day

Despite warnings that today is the busiest shopping day of the year, I nevertheless headed into central London to finishing off my Christmas buying. The key I've found is to get to the shops early; it's amazing how quiet the city's main shopping areas can be shortly after opening time. I don't even mean that early; I arrived a little before 10am, and I got around without and hustle, bustle or hassle.

I even headed back into the city later in the day as part of my obligatory weekly attempt to do some photography. "Attempt" has been the word of late with the weather being so uniformly great and uninspiring. There was actually some sunshine this morning, but typically when I head out with the camera it's back to overcase skies once more. Although I'm getting to grips with the D70, I still haven't worked out a definite checklist to ensure all settings are correct before setting off. Today it was only on getting back and downloading the photos did I notice rather a lot of noise and on checking found that the ISO was set to 640. I must have been playing with it during the week to see how much it affected exposure. Hey-ho, at least I didn't mess up any groundbreaking photography. The weather largely put pay to that, but I got around and found some diverse views of the city. Being urban as they are I may well try making them negative and using the grain to my advantage in adding effect to the images.