Another popular travel destination in London, Buckingham Palace, which is the official London residence of Britain’s sovereigns and the Queen Elizabeth II since Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne in 1837.  It is located in the City of Westminster of Greater London and is currently the administrative headquarters of the British Monarch. The state rooms, used for official and state entertaining, are open to the public each year for most of August and September, as part of the Palace’s Summer Opening.

What really attracts crowds to come over is the Changing The Guard ceremony. This colourful ceremony is held every day (except in August til April where it is held every other day) at the forecourt (main facade as shown in the photo below) where the “frozen” Queens wardens are changing shift. It happens once a day only at 11:30AM sharp.

The detail history and the design of Buckingham Palace will not be touched here. Check it out from the official website of the British Monarchy. Here is the set of my travel photos showing what you should expect to see and whether it’s worth to visit the palace when you are visiting London.

I hate to say that we missed the ceremony when we were in London last Spring. What we saw is the Buckingham Palace behind the gate with a notice board informing tourists the next time to catch the changing guard ceremony.

There are still many people gathering in front of the palace. Some  are tourists like us and others are the locals who came here to relax in the Sunday afternoon. There is a royal garden in front of the palace at both sides.

Right in front of the palace in the middle is the Victoria Memorial, the sculpture of the Queen Victoria. It was completed in 1911 the sculptor, Sir Thomas Brock. The surrounding pool was then constructed by the architect Sir Aston Webb with 2,300 tons of white marble. The statue of Queen Victoria is facing north-eastwards towards The Mall, a ceremonial approach route to the palace. 4 corners of the monument feature dark patinated bronze statues of the Angel of Justice, the Angel of Truth and the Charity. On the pinnacle is the Victory with two seated figures.

A close up of the Angel of Justice bronze statue.

It was Sunday when I was there and the Buckingham Road and The Mall is closed to traffic.

The close up look at the Statue of Queen Victoria.

The Mall in London is the road running straight from Buckingham Palace at its western end, surrounding the Victoria Memorial, to Admiralty Arch and on to Trafalgar Square at its eastern end. It is a motorway traffic on weekdays and Saturday but is closed for pedestrians on Sunday. On its left is Green Park and St. James Park is on its right. Both are the perfect recreational parks for people to relax enjoying the greens and waters.

If you have time strolling down the Mall from Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square as what I did, it’s still worth the visit. If you would like to see more of my travel photos in London, click on the Flickr slideshow below.

Coming up next is another set of photos showcasing another travel attraction in London, the St. Jame’s Park next and along the ceremonial road of The Mall. After which would be my experience on London travel Day 2 Continues to Leicester Square and China Town. Subscribe now to Travel Feeder’s feed for free updates via email. - Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog

London weather changes as fast as women mind. Don’t be surprise if you see bright sunshine minutes after a heavy downpour, and it rains again when you are still posing for a photo shot! This rapid change of weather and sunlight had restricted photo opportunities in London. Especially when you have limited time at one tourist spot and the sudden rain will surely ruin your photo session.

During my travel to London recently, we had 4 days visiting London. Out of that 4 day period, 1st evening was raining. The whole 2nd day was a cloudy and rainy day. We were lucky to have some bright sunlight on 3rd day but still cloudy. The 4th day was perfect but we were leaving in the morning. Basically the London sky during the period was overcast with thick cloud. How did I capture nice photos of London’s attractions then? White Balance (WB) is the answer.

Now is the 2nd question. How could we adjust the WB of our digital camera? WB exists only in digital camera. Digital camera converts analogue lights into digital colour. Different colours are being calculated digitally based on the white point the image sensor received. However, white will appear too yellowish under halogen and too bluish under fluorescent due to their different colour temperature from different light source. This is when the WB setting of our camera comes in. WB is a feature of digital camera to adjust its white point colour temperature to adopt the different ambient lighting so you can see the actual colour of the scene. Auto WB setting is the camera technology to adjust its colour temperature automatically to adopt different ambient lightings. However, AWB doesn’t always correct.

When the sky is overcast with thick clouds, the colour temperature is much lower than expected. In this case, AWB would adjust White point of the scene to a much higher colur temperature and the image will appear bluish than what is seen by our eyes. Take a look at the above travel photo which I took on the 2nd day of my London visit. It is supposed to be an attractive shot of the Victoria Memorial with Buckingham Palace as background. But the overcast weather had actually ruined the image with dull colour.

Firstly, the image is still slightly under exposed eventhough I had increased the Exposure Value by +1/3 stop. 2ndly, WB is out. This problem happened to many of my London travel photos. As I mentioned above, the rapid change of weather had made selecting WB of my D60 difficult. Switching to Daylight preset WB may be perfect for one shot but may not be for the next if the weather changed.

The same problem happened if we thought of selecting Cloudy preset WB for this scene but the complex ambient light from the overcast sky and pool water reflection had fooled the Nikon WB sensor and the image appeared to be much yellow than actual, as shown in the above photo. But some may prefer it as it shows warmer and more dramatic colours!

For these kind of weather in your travel destination, the best WB setting I would prefer is still be the AWB, if you are shooting JPEGs (If you are shooting RAW, forget about the WB setting as you can select the destined colour temperature at a later stage). Set WB setting to AWB and shoot all the way! Leave the colour correction at a later stage by adjusting colour temperature of the image with either CS5 or Lightroom 3, to whatever colour temperature you prefer…

The above photo is the result of what I adjusted during post processing with Photoshop. By increasing  the brightness and reducing the colour temperature, this was actually what I’ve seen for the Victoria Memorial of London, with also an increase in colour saturation.

Conclusions? WB setting is critical for photo shooting under one fixed ambient lighting, like studio or museum shooting. Pre-set your camera WB will easily produce a set of perfectly coloured photos collection that is ready for printing direct from camera. However, if you are shooting outdoor travel scenes, especially in a travel destination that have fast changing weather, like London in Spring, switch your camera WB setting to AutoWB. It would be easier and safer to shoot using AWB to get good result for most of the photos. Then play around the slider of Photoshop to adjust the image colour temperature, to what you prefer, not necessarily to what you’ve seen in actual. And this is the most useful purpose of adjusting White Balance. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.

Though it was not first found in Netherland, Tulips has now become the symbolic flower for Netherland. Due to some historic reasons since long time ago when Amsterdam was the main trading port in the region, Netherland is now the biggest exporters of Tulips flower in the world. However, Tulips has its blooming season limited only in Spring between March to May. This made witnessing the tulips blossom so valuable and attractive in Netherland each Spring.

I was so lucky to be able to witness the blooming Tulips in Netherland on my Europe travel last May. Some part of the field had already been harvested but most of them were still growing in the renown Keukenhof Garden. Here is one of them…

There were so many different species of Tulips grown in the garden and this was just one of them with striking deep pink color. Nothing special. I like the color and off course the tulips in this photo. I will post a lot a lot more tulips photos when I come to stories about travel attraction in Amsterdam next. So follow me closely on my upcoming Europe travel tips! - Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.

Good news! Travel photo wallpaper calendar for August 2010 is now available here to download FREE! If you still haven’t got the  July 2010 wallpaper calendar, Download it first. As usual, 2 sizes are available here: 1920 x 1080 px for Full HD wide screen LCD and 1280 x 1024 px for conventional computer screen (or neither size is fitted nicely on your computer screen? Please let me know…). Choose either one to fit your LCD and download it here for FREE. Or you may want to download both. No problem. They are for my readers!

Download this widescreen version of 1920 x 1080 px

Download this standard version of 1280 x 1024 px

This travel photo was taken on top of the highest viewpoint of Piazza Michelangelo in Florence, Italy, during my recent trip to Europe. It was the best viewpoint in Florence city to oversee the city skyline of Florence. The dominant feature in the shot is the dome of Duomo on the right and the Vecchio Bridge at the far left side crossing the River Arno. Read my series of posts on my travel experience in Europe for more interesting stories of my Europe travel.

Again, this travel photo wallpaper calendar is free to download from here and there are more wallpaper calendars for other months coming up next. If you like it, please support me by dropping a note to say ‘hi‘ in the comment section of this post, or preferably, subscribe to this travel blog feeds via RSS or email for free updates, or, you may buy me a cup of coffee by clicking this

Harrods, the famous name you should have heard of. It is the luxury departmental store in London. Many celebrities and royal families love to shop there. Established in 1834, 7-storey Harrods is the biggest store in London with a total area of more than a million square feet. From a grocery store when it was first started, Harrods has now been transformed into a prestigious departmental store selling all varieties of luxury goods, fashions, services and foods in over 300 departments within its premises in Brompton Road, Knightsbridge, London, UK.

Local fashion ‘big name‘ such as Burberry are prominently housed in store. Travelers visiting London should add Harrods into their ‘must-visit‘ tour itinerary eventhough shopping is not in your list. It’s located in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which is 2km West of London city centre.

It is reachable by taking taking the Piccadilly Line of London Underground and get off at Knightsbridge station, either you are from Heathrow Airport or Leicester Square. Very convenient and it costs £4 per way. From the underground station, you need to walk like 200m along Brompton Road and some other luxury boutiques before seeing Harrods in front of you. Opposite it is the latest TopShop outlet (another big name in UK fashion).

It’s a huge store put it this way. If  you plan to really explore every corner of Harrods, you need at least 1 whole day. You can do that if you have plenty of time and if you are a real shopaholic and there are over 30 eateries within the premise. However, if you are planning just to witness the luxurious environment within and people watching, with just a couple of hours to spare, you can briefly go round the Ground floor and stop over at its unique Food Hall at Ground Floor.

Food Hall in Harrods is indeed food lovers paradise. You can find all the finest and freshest foods under one roof. The best part of it is amidst those counters selling charcuterie, meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, chocolates, candy, bakery and poultry, there are also 13 restaurants and cafes where you can dine in for lunch or dinner. Let’s follow me to travel around the Food Hall by photos taken by me below.

Fresh seafood counters.

Even fresher seafoods…

Rotisserie, a restaurant for all sorts of quality flame-roasted meat, chicken, duck and lamb from the meat counter in Harrods food hall.

The Pantry department where you can find jams, biscuits and more. Take a look at the ceiling. There are unique ceiling design to each departments and they are beautiful.

Bakery department. These are special made Harrods pastries that cost a bomb. However, if you are lucky enough, you can try it with 50% off the original price!

Candy department. Again, these are exclusive Harrods candies which could not be found any other place…

Next to the pantry is Fruit and Vegetable Department. The beauty and the mess…

Red Currants, Black Berries, Rasp Berries. Do you fancy any of them? Selling at £7-£10 per small box!

Another food and gourmet counter. Mouth watering…

Specialty confectionery and patisserie counter. Do you think you want to try? With such a price tag?

What about 50% discount? Such a good news for budget traveler, like me…

Eventhough you are not shopaholic and you have limited budget on your London travel, visiting the Food Hall in Harrods sure will worth the £4 underground ticket. We bought the daily ticket which covers Knightsbridge as well as other travel destinations in London for only £5.60. So it was even more worthwhile to pay Harrods a visit.

However, there are few visitors guidelines that should be put attention on. Visitors must ensure all clothing is clean and presentable and that the appropriate footwear is worn whilst in the store. The most relevant rules to me is that I was asked to carry rucksacks in my hand rather than on my back or shoulder. This is both to prevent damage to displays and for health and safety reasons. Harrods provides a left luggage service at small cost, should the bag be too heavy to carry. Another affecting rules to me is the restriction of taking photos in any area within the store where photography or filming may not be appropriate. That is why these photos here are extremely valuable! Hope you enjoy. Don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS Feeds or email Feeds for upcoming free updates on my stories of Europe travel. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.