Eros, or, the Angel of Christian Charity in Piccadilly Circus, London.

The Angel of Christian Charity? No, incorrect.  Eros, Greek God of love? Also incorrect. A dollar for anyone who can tell me the name of the statue atop the Shaftesbury Monument Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus, London.

This is an HDR experiment gone coolly awry. All the HDR tutorials say to use a tripod. I will shout from the highest mountaintops: I hate tripods.

This is a composite of three images. If you look really close you can see they don’t completely align. That can be blamed on a) no tripod; b) the pints the night before and my shaking hands; c) the biting cold.

All that said, still cool.

By the time this is posted I will be somewhere over the middle-east, bound for Doha, Qatar. After a brief stopover in that wee nation I’ll be off to merry ole London, and a chance to be reunited, albeit briefly, with Mrs. Stevo.

I’ve read some rather nasty reviews of Qatar Airways, but after dealing with Chinese taxi drivers for four years I think I can handle anything the airline industry can dish out.

My camera bag tipped the scales at just over 20 pounds, without the assorted cables, chargers, batteries and adapters. What am I taking? Everything.

• Canon EOS 40D Body
• Canon EOS 400D Body
• Canon 24-105 f/4L USM IS Lens
• Canon 70-700 f/2.8 USM IS Lens
• Canon 50 f/1.4 USM Lens
• Canon 17-55 f/3.5-5.6 Lens (a back-up. I’m probably get better results sketching than using the kit lens that came with the 400D)
• Canon Speedlite 580 EX II Flash Unit
• CF Card Reader / 80G hard drive.
• Assorted remote flash triggers, shutter releases, memory cards, flash diffusers.
• Asus 4G eeePC

Nine-and-a-half hours to Doha. A three hour layover, the another seven to London. From there, a six hour wait for my bus, then two hours to Mrs. Stevo’s warm embrace. What’s that, 27.5 hours? Math is not my strong point unless there is a $ before the number.

Sometimes you have to get the f*%# out. Any long-term expat will agree. This will be my second trip out of China in four years. I long for fields and open spaces, after living in a city of 12 million.

Through the technological miracles of Wordpress, Asian Ramblings will continue to provide new content during my British sojourn. If I have time, I’ll post images of a frozen England. They will most likely be blurry, as I will be shivering. The climate of south China and England are a tad different, or so I hear.

Stay tuned, y’all. See pics of Stevo and the Missus, bangers and mash, pints, Big Ben, and Stevo’s meeting with Queen Elizabeth II. I heard a rumor I am to be knighted. Or deported. I can’t quite remember. Both sound exciting.

Jolly good show, peace out for now.

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Today’s guest post is from Ron Dubin at rtd13.com. Ron is a great many things: Photographer, author, father, traveler, blogger, and friends. He takes up the slack with as stevo (grudgingly) enjoys a sabbatical.

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An Amsterdam canal after dark.

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In his own words: A native of Brooklyn, New York, Ron Dubin is a photographer and writer based in Los Angeles and Cape Canaveral, Florida … more