Digital Photography for the Older and Wiser

My book, Digital Photography for the Older and Wiser, shows you how to choose the right camera, the main features to look out for and tips to take great images. It also explains photo editing, organising and sharing your images. In full colour with lots of screenshots and photography, it’s been a useful tool not only for older people, but for complete photography/computing novices too!

Now, you can become a fan of the page on Facebook. There, I will be updating the page with tutorials, helpful links, video presentations, discussion boards, news and more. But I need your help to make it a useful community on the web!

Today, Street View is live in the UK, giving people the ability to view a 360 degree replica of the nation’s streets in photographic form.

From what I’ve seen of Street View in London it is very impressive, particularly as it was a cloudless, sunny day when they took a picture of my flat! Sadly, some common landmarks such as Covent Garden are marred by endless bendy buses, the continual digging up of the roads to fix old water pipes, and/or the scaffolding that is reminiscent of a changing metropolis.

To use Street View simply type in a UK postcode into Google, and in the balloon that pops up on Google Maps, click the ‘Street View’ link to take you to the panorama view. You can zoom in and out and click the arrows on the road to travel back and forth along it. To see the 360 degree view, hold your mouse down on to the street view image and drag the screen up, down, left or right.

Because people are in view there are privacy concerns. Google’s blurred the faces, but someone wearing distinguishable clothing could still be recognised. And they haven’t blurred everyone’s face – after just a couple of minutes browsing I noticed this guy – he is wearing a cap but you can still make him out. What if the woman he’s holding hands with isn’t his wife?

I wonder when people will start finding the funny images they found when this service launched in other countries – the guy passed out on the lawn, the burglar escaping over a fence, and so on. It’s only a matter of time and I am sure there are some people with too much of it who are quite keen to be one of the first Google Street View controversy-spotters!

Spotted these two ads from the bus – one promoting healthy eating; the other for a supersized burger (click for a larger version).

Please excuse the mess and any broken image links… London Photos is undergoing a LONG OVERDUE facelift for 2009 at the moment and has a few cosmetic issues to sort out…. Normal service will resume shortly! Promise!

Did you know the London Photos site was launched in September 2003 and its design had stayed the same since then? Although I was on a good thing and felt no need to fix it, content management systems have moved on. And it was still easily spammable, so comments were turned off pretty much all the time.

View from my window

Other photography events this month include the Robert Capa war photograph exhibition at the Barbican, which runs until 25 January. And top contributors to the Tate’s Street or Studio Flickr pool will be featured in a print on demand book which is being launched at the Tate Britain’s Duveen galleries from 6-8pm 7 November. Whew!

Thanks for visiting the London Photos blog in 2007. I know there hasn’t been a prolific range of photos this year, partly because I spent a third of the year travelling abroad rather than staying in London! I do hope that I’ll be able to upgrade this supremely ancient site which is still running a 2003 version of Movable Type, and actually migrate all the images to the new version successfully. Part of the reason I haven’t been updating as much, apart from taking less photos, is because this website is quite clunky and prone to spam – I’ve recently reopened comments though!

An identifying sticker worn at a London Christmas party that entitled the bearer to free food and drink

Another thing I hope to have ready in early 2008 is a self-published book of London Photos that includes highlights of images I’ve produced over the last four years. (Off topic: if you’re interested in a novel for teens 14 and over, I’ve written Drive to Nowhere a mystery/adventure novel set in the Australian bush and suburban Sydney starring the teen daughter of a rock star – check it out and maybe buy a copy if you’re interested )

Some vegetarian Mee Grob Thai noodles.

These are the pre-vegetable dinners that we received at the PPA Awards last Wednesday – the Periodical Publishers’ Association. My aubergine dish was great. I say ‘pre vegetable’ because we received little vegetables afterwards, like a potato square and some sugar snaps and carrots. I was sat in pretty much the same spot 3.5 years ago!