Our first day in Athens had to be spent at and around the heart of the city: the ancient Acropolis was pretty awesome. The million people we shared it with would probably agree.

Yes, it was crowded, but really only during the first part of our visit. Once we got up top to the Parthenon, the crowd didn’t seem to be as big, and frankly it didn’t seem to matter anyway. We were in the midst of the beginnings of Western civilization and culture, a place to just experience. Restoration continues on all of the Acropolis’ structures, but that didn’t detract much from our visit. As the photos show, it was also a beautiful, sunny day — the perfect beginning to our four days in Athens.

After the Acropolis, we had lunch in the Plaka and checked out Hadrian’s Library and the Ancient Agora. My favorite part of both was the Temple of Hephaestus on the western edge of the agora, the photo on the bottom left above.

The images in the Athens: Acropolis gallery include those from the Acropolis and the Museum; the Athens gallery has photos from Hadrian’s Library and the Ancient Agora. More from Athens to come.

Yep, the Tower’s still there. It’s been there in various shapes and sizes since London’s been London, and as far as I heard, they still had ravens.

This was a field trip day, albeit an overcast and crappy one. OK, this is actually a make-up field trip, since Thursday’s was very much rained out. I don’t think my students were very enthusiastic about shooting the Tower on such a day, but we did get glimpses of sunlight shining through. Seriously, I think there was a whole five minutes that I had sun to shoot in. It was short-lived, however.

This might have been my fifth or sixth time visiting the Tower of London. It was crowded, too, so I likely don’t need to go back. Anyway, here are the best shots I got — not too impressive, but it was a part of my trip.

See the rest of this year’s images in the gallery, or go back to my last visit.

We arrived at Windsor late in the day, after Arundel and Stonehenge. We were all tired and only stopped to get a bite to eat before heading back to London for the evening. However, the palace looked too good in the setting sun not to get a couple of shots. I’m not entirely pleased with any of these, but they are good enough to have a look at.

For some reason, I thought that Sir Christopher Wren’s crowning architectural achievement was a Catholic Church. I suppose it makes sense that it’s not, but I wonder where I got that idea. St. Paul’s Cathedral is simply awesome. It’s also unlike most other cathedrals in England, something for which it was criticized in its initial years. It is beautiful and clean, bringing heaven to earth under its immense dome. Pity they don’t allow photography in the church anymore.

You can, however, still shoot it from the outside — something which I’ve done since my first visit about twenty years ago. Here are some I took on this visit.

Check out more in my gallery; there are also some from two years ago.

Today was our class field trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the Figures and Fictions photography exhibit. I was blown away by the images — not what I expected from South African photogs. In fact, I wasn’t sure what to expect for South African photogs. All of the images were powerful, and many were hyper-formal, juxtaposing Western ideas of portraiture with the pastiche of reality that now seems to represent a post-Apartheid South Africa. I particularly liked: Graeme Williams’ The Edge of Town series; Pieter Hugo’s portraits, like the Hyena Men (this one was very striking); and Jodi Bieber’s Real Beauty series.

After some time at the V&A, we went to Hyde Park the second part of the assignment. I let the students work, and Giles and I walked and took photos, making our way to Westminster. We photographed a bit of the V&A, Hyde Park, Buckingham, Parliament, and areas in between.