London Photos: London life in images by Kim Gilmour

Digital Photography for the Older and Wiser

Time for a shameless plug: over the past few months I’ve been busy writing a book, Digital Photography for the Older and Wiser. As the title suggests, it’s aimed towards over 50s who’ve had no experience with digital photography. It covers everything from the basics of taking digital photos through to sharing, organising and printing them. I had a thoroughly fun experience putting the book together!

Out in mid-January 2010 and published by John Wiley and Sons, the book will make a great gift for anyone who’s just bought or received a new digital camera. And to be honest you don’t have to be old to get something out of it!

Digital photography has become such a part of modern-day culture, and hopefully the book will cut through all the technical jargon and give people confidence to embark on this thoroughly enjoyable hobby. I also explain how to use free online tools like Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery to make basic retouches to your photos. And let’s not forget: what makes a great photo doesn’t have anything to do with how many megapixels your camera has! So the book does include a couple of chapters dedicated to general photography tips.

Digital Photography for the Older and Wiser is available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk for £11.69 (and on Amazon’s US site you can be alerted to when it’s available).

I’ve had great help from people who’ve contributed photographs to the book, and you may even recognise a few of mine that have graced the pages of the London Photos blog over the years!

Bizarrely, this simple photograph of a few sticks of tofu on a stick has been ‘liked’ by 207 people. It’s part of the Tofu fan page on Facebook I created a year or so ago. To date, more than 16,000 people around the world are self-proclaimed fans of the bean curd, posting images of a range of foodstuffs. It started off with just two.

It is a bit odd when you post a photograph of your dinner online and random people start commenting on it, as a friend said when I explained the tale of the skewers. Within about two minutes of posting, I had immediate responses and comments (all good!).

But that is the power of social networking. I’ve not had much of a chance to update this blog recently, yet people who are always connected to their ‘networks’ can’t get themselves out of the loop for fear of missing something important (in this case, a photograph of deep fried tofu on skewers; marinated in vegetable oil, garlic, turmeric and soy sauce).

Facebook is now the most popular place for sharing photographs, but these are often dumped straight from the digital camera on to the site, with minimal editing, and not too much context.

What about good old photo blogs – do people still visit them anymore, now we have Flickr and Facebook?

The view from Borders on Charing Cross Rd at around 7.30pm. Had no choice but to stay put until the rain eased!

Click for larger image.

It’s been absolutely ages since I have had a chance to take photos – but I hope to be able to do so in the coming weeks, particularly as a new project I am undertaking over the next couple of months will require quite a bit of photography! I will have more details later.

The other week I was walking down Kilburn High Road in North West London. So many shops have closed down due to the recession. This street was a bustling collection of cheap ‘pound stores’ and discount clothing boutiques. Granted, most of the time the merchandise was pretty shoddy, but the street did have a very interesting atmosphere. But now the street is depressingly empty. Poundland has the monopoly on cheap goods (there are two Poundlands within blocks of each other) and many shops are completely empty.

The discount store pictured in the gallery was once this store.

The cherry blossoms are out in London and the birds are singing. The sky is blue. Strange to think that last month we had the most snow here in almost 20 years!

After attending a 9.30am breakfast meeting (over a delicious spinach, cheese and mushroom omelette at Richeloux, St John’s Wood, which I am still raving about) I wandered down Circus Rd to capture the spring blossoms… sadly, I only had my mobile (again) but you get the idea.

Last year, Google vans began trawling the streets of the UK, taking photos of every single street and property using a panoramic video camera. Over the last few months, the images were stitched together.

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!

Sunday was the warmest day of the year so far. I still get a tad confused whenever people start queuing up at the ice cream van when it’s actually not that hot – 17C or something.

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

Taken last week. The remaining snow resembles meteorites that have crash-landed from a different planet.