No long rambling thoughts, just a long ramble through South London to stop me sitting at the computer and doing the work I should be doing.

Herewith – some photos:

Greenwich foot tunnel – photos of which are officially not allowed any more

A sad forlorn Fozzie Bear abandoned probably by a child being dragged across a busy road – see Londonist for more lost bears

Severndroog Castle – a folly built in 1784 to commemorate Commodore Sir William James who, in April 1755, attacked and destroyed the island fortress of Suvarnadurg (then rendered in English: Severndroog) on the western coast of India.

Other photos – here, here and here

The view from Severndroog castle over an ornamental garden – with a sapling planted by some idiot right in the line of sight for photographers.

Rather a nice water fountain from the remains of an old house demolished by the London County Council.

The Two Towers – an old water tower and the more modern communications tower

The view from the cafe in Oxleas Wood – a good spot to stop and have a rest.

Wandering round through Welling and down to Plumstead Common. On the way, this dire warning on a small grass verge against letting cattle roam the land

Plumstead Common offers these views over East London. Not particularly scenic, but the scale of the view is impressive.

Thence home.

Each photo is geotagged on a map if you want to know where they were taken from – just click on the photo then the “map” link on the side menu on the Flickr website.

A few months ago I decided to start taking regular photos of the skyline to document the construction of The Shard from my home.

Umm, a bit of laziness in taking photos and incompetence in keeping some of the ones I did take has left a few gaps in the time-lapse, although most of the missing weeks were when the structure was below the line of sight anyway.

Now that the core is rising up and fast becoming a major feature on the skyline, it will be harder to forget in future!

Here are three photos to show how the concrete core is rising up over just the past few weeks.

Nothing to see – yet.

Just starting to peer out over the tops of the buildings

Fairly noticeable now!

There is a moderately poplar photographic technique, a derivative of tilt-shifting which enables photos of real places to be modified in such a way as they look as if they are photos of scale models.

It’s quite a bizarre effect when done well, and using an online tool, I had a play with some of the photos I have taken over the past few years. You can use more sophisticated cleverness to get a more pronounced effect, but the online tool gives a good idea of what can be achieved.

You can click on each to see the original photo (over at Flickr).

A 1938 tube train on a special outing to High Barnet station

Side Street near the Brunswick Center

Soldiers passing under Wellington Arch by Hyde Park
(open on London Open House Weekend)

London from the top of Northala Park

From the top of a car park just off Oxford Street

Another photo of the 1938 train at the same location as above

And finally – St Giles in the Fields as seen from one of the upper floors of CenterPoint
(taken on London Open House Weekend)

The stunning sight this morning of the Full Moon sinking down over London had me reaching for my camera. Thanks to an optical illusion though, if you take a photo of an enlarged moon, it seems to shrink to normal size when you print out the photo.

This is a well known Moon Illusion, so to show the photo below as I saw it, a bit of digital photo trickery has been employed.

Click on the photo for the larger version, or View On Black.

Just uploaded some old photos I took last year of a fairly famous City tower taken from a slightly unusual angle.