I don’t think the organisers of what now seems to be an annual ‘Taste of Spain‘ in Regent St have really decided quite what the event is. I only bothered to go to it as I had to get from one of may favourite pubs just to the north of Oxford Circus, where I’d met up with a few friends, to Piccadilly Circus, where I could get a bus towards Waterloo. And of course I only needed to do this because Regent St was closed to traffic for this event. It didn’t put me in a better mood when I got to the bus stop and stood there waving wildly to the driver as my bus sailed past at some speed – there are just too many bus drivers with something against picking up passengers.
There really didn’t seem enough in the way of entertainment taking place – unless you find queueing fun. Not even a great deal of leaflets to collect and very little being given away.
Coming out of the pub I almost bumped into a guy with some legs over his shoulder and a companion with a bright pink wig. Fortunately he stopped and posed briefly for me, as I’d been busy talking and not at all ready to take a picture.
Photographically things were pretty straightforward, other than the sun which was a little low and usually in exactly the wrong place – one or two shots ruined by nasty flare (a little in this picture.) Everything here on a 20mm lens on the D700 as I couldn’t be bothered to get the other body out of my bag. Or because I really like working with just the one fixed lens when I can. A few are slightly cropped where I didn’t have time or couldn’t move in closer.
The only really interesting stand in Regent St was for Madrid, mostly taken up by reproductions of pictures from the Prado in large bright red stands. Favourite for the poseurs was Goya’s ‘La maja desnuda‘ and I took a whole series of various people in front of it. I’ve several of this scene, and o one of the things I like about it – difficult to see on this scale – is that you can clearly see the guy in it photographing his woman is framing out her body language which is what would give the picture its interest.
There is of course another photographer in the picture – Epson digital rangefinder on his stomach at extreme left, and being a mate of mine I’ll probably get to see his picture of the scene later. But I find I see through the viewfinder better when I hold the camera to my eye!
More pictures and ‘anthropologie’ on My London Diary. Where I also speculate about the copyright issues involved and that a prior trip to Madrid might have made Ruskin less shocked with Effie on 10th April 1846. Nowadays its rather easier to find porn on the Internet.