This month for the first time I am joining in with Kat Sloma's Photo Heart Conection. The idea is to 'Deepen the connection between your photos and your heart and soul by participating in this monthly review of your images, to find the one that best connects to your heart.' after much thought I choose this image of someone I saw on the tube in London.

I got on the train at the terminal ( where it is not underground) and noticed this man sitting in the corner opposite me - I thought he had the most amazing face somehow full of humour and wisdom. I reminded myself that my word of the year is courage and asked him if I could take a picture - he agreed and though you can't really see it ( I had my 50m fixed lens on) made a kind of Jazz hands gesture. In that moment I felt a real connection with this stranger here on the London Underground where our our paths intersected for a brief, (he got out at the next station), moment.

This week most of my photography times has been spent on class assignments for Kim Manley Ort's 50mm class. I was particularly excited by this weeks themes of street photograph and portraits. The former though is especially challenging with a 50mm lens as you really have to get up close to people, whereas normally I zoom in on people with my 55- 250 lens. In order to resist temptation I put this firmly in my camera case and left it at home.

The first part of the weeks assignment was around street photography. This was a bit of a challenge as I had a very busy week at work and not much time to take a break. On Tuesday however I had half an hour between meetings and rushed into town for 10 minutes intensive photography.

The first challenge was to get some interesting shots with in the time frame I had. The short time meant I couldn't go right down the High St where there were likely to be more people but had to stay at the top of town which is more sparsely populated. This caused another problem in that it was difficult for me and my camera to blend in to the crowd and it was pretty obvious that I was taking pictures of people. my first attempt at overcoming my discomfort was shooting through a shop window, in this case a nail bar / beauty salon.

Then I tried shooting from the other side of the street - what I most love about this image is the pipe, you don't often see them nowadays and it reminds me of my grandfather who was a great pipe smoker.

Finally from a bit of a distance away which meant I had to crop a fair bit, and even then I think if those two had been at all awake they would have noticed me!

That was it, time was up and I had to head back to my meeting!

My next opportunity came on Friday when I headed off to London - I had a bit of spare time so I headed down to the South Bank near waterloo Station to see what I could find.

I started off with a cafe shot

Then I found theses kids in the skate park, they seem to be practicing for some kind of show and were being filmed.

The next picture is a bit of a crossover between street and portrait - this guy was sitting opposite me on the tube I thought he had the most amazing and happy face so I asked if I could take his picture - happily he said yes!

Next was the portrait assignment and I was wondering how to find model in the short time I had available to me. I was beginning to think I would need to fall back on my husband which would have been OK but not ideal. Then I had a brainwave! I have my hair cut by the daughter of a close friend who has a hairdressing salon at a small department store. Her daughter who is a singer / songwriter often helps our when she hasn't any other work on, so if she was there maybe she would model for me.

She was there and agreed so once my foils were on we repaired to a stairwell at the back of the shop where there was natural light and not a lot of people. As well as having a fabulous face she has a lot of fascinating tattoos and I couldn't resist taking some closeups

Her eyes are also particularly dramatic

but my overall favourite is this one which shows off her lovely smile

Photo Heart Connection January

Exploring With My 50mm Lens