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It’s a nice feeling when you wake up and fellow Flickr users inform you your picture has been chosen to feature on Flickr’s Explore page. Not sure what else it means apart from a little boost to my ego and a few more eyeballs checking out my work. Which is always nice. Thanks 🙂 Click on the above screengrab to see the actual image. #flickr

Ever wanted to be featured on Flickr’s explore page, but didn’t know how others get there? Photopreneur has an interesting post explaining how Flickr’s algorithm selects images for the Explore page. Worth a read, even if you hate Flickr or don’t give a damn about reaching a wider audience. Abelardo Morell’s fascinating camera obscura technique, which fills darkened rooms with amazing landscapes. National Geographic put together a gallery of his best images and posted a video explaining the technique. Wartime photographers:  the New York Times executive editor, Bill Keller talks to war photographers Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich. Both were wounded while on assignments as war photographers, both saw their colleagues die. The transcript is called “The inner lives of wartime photographers” and is essential reading for everyone, not just photographers. #cameraobscura #flickr #warphotography

Better late than never – the video I shot during last week’s Gay Pride parade in London is ready at last. It was my first video edited on Final Cut Pro X and I quite enjoyed using it, but then again it was a relatively easy and straightforward project. I do hope I’ll be saying the same after more complex projects too. The images from the parade are here. http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=26238021&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0 #FCPX #LondonGayPride

…it may be the most striking camera ad I’ve ever seen. Possibly even the most striking ad I’ve ever seen – in general. Some of you may have already seen it as it’s been on YouTube since June, but somehow I’ve only just discovered it. Be warned, it’s age-restricted, partly explicit and therefore possibly NSFW. #ad #Fuji #video

“You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” Taken from Christopher Nolan’s superb Inception. #inception #quote

Oh, sorry. It’s not the camera, it’s the photographer. My bad. http://nhl.cdn.neulion.net/u/videocenter/embed.swf (Haven’t we all done that?) #funny #leica

Last Friday was my “explore something new” day. And I’m ashamed to admit that after almost two decades in London, prior to Friday, I had never climbed the 311 steps to the top of Sir Christopher Wren’s Monument on Fish Street Hill. Off to Fish Street Hill I went then. Built in the 1670s to commemorate the Great Fire of London, the structure offers great, if a bit restricted (by the metal safety nets), views of London and is accessible via a narrow spiral staircase – a perfect photo op for postcard and calendar makers the world over, I guess. My ambitious plan to take images of the city from unusual angles was thwarted by two things though: the aforementioned safety net and the ferocious winds. Still, the frostbite was a small price to pay for the confirmation that – even from this vantage point – the Gherkin, until recently one of the most dominant buildings on the City skyline, is hardly visible. Who knows, I might produce a calendar for spiral staircase fetishists some time soon. #city #London #monument

We all know the usual Vi@gra, Ciali$ etc spam subject lines. We automatically delete them. We’re sophisticated enough – well, some of us – to distinguish between a genuine bank email and a promise of a windfall from a forgotten relative we never really knew existed in Nigeria. We are also used to random ‘free sexy pix, click here’ messages we get via various instant messengers. So it was probably only a matter of time before spammers realised they needed to try a bit harder to grab our attention and make us click on a link of a dubious origin. I have just received a spam message which quite simply appealed to my morality and suggested that my actions regarding this message would be a clear indication of my personality. Or to be more precise, of how rude I am. A morality lesson from a spammer? Must be a first. “This is spam. But if you don’t want to be among the 95% of rude and ignorant users, help us and click on this link,” it read. Very honest from the start. And then this appeal to your consciousness – ‘help us’! Was tempted to click, of course. Not out of guilt, just to see what exactly they were trying to install on my machine or what it was they were trying to flog. I didn’t. Followed my usual pattern of behaviour in such circumstances. But how many people did fall for that? Still, almost liked them.

Then one day you walk to work early in the morning, bleary-eyed and in need of a really strong coffee, when you spot a fantastic photo opportunity. That heavy bag would come in handy but, sadly, it’s having a day off… If you need yet another proof that a decent camera phone (I’m ignoring its obvious technical limitations here) is as good as many entry-level DSLRs, here it is. I took the above picture with my iPhone on the way to work yesterday. The only thing that bugged me was the fluff on my lens, which I cleaned with my fingers (try that with a standard DSLR lens). But other than that I was quite happy with the outcome. As I was rushing, I only took two pics and posted one of them, the better one, on Flickr. “Wow, gorgeous! Which app?”, asked my friend, a photo editor for a well-known magazine, when she saw the picture. None. No tweaking. No Hipstamatic or Camera Bag. Just as it came out. OK, a pure coincidence, but hey, that’s how many pictures we like are taken. Londonist chose the image for one of its posts, and some of my Twitter followers and friends seemed to be impressed too. Which always feels fantastic. Another proof, as if one was needed, that it’s not about – or at least it shouldn’t be about – the gear. In some circumstances at least. But I’m not telling you anything new, you knew that already, right? What’s probably more interesting about the picture is the bike. As someone pointed out in comments on Flickr, the same bike was there a couple of days earlier. Part of the installation or a coincidence? Answers on a postcard… #iphone #kit #photography #shoreditch

I’m not sure whether that’s pure street art or something else. I’m not even sure who did this or how long it’s been there. I found this on a hoarding in front of a dilapidated house in Union Street, Southwark. Just several unfinished “Before I die….” sentences and hundreds of replies from people from all over the world. Many of them illegible, but the remaining ones prove that we all share a bunch of common and very similar wishes. Apart from the occasional cock- and crack-related wishes (someone also wanted to collect enough bonds before their death), most of the remaining ones can be put into two broad categories. Be happy. And be free. And what’s your wish? #London #southwark #streetphotography

In all our conversations about how to use Twitter, we seem to forget about one crucial thing – the content. What you say says a lot about who you are. Granted, not everyone is on Twitter to spread groundbreaking ideas, analyse the world in 140 characters or offer you solutions to your problems. But some people’s use of Twitter reveals a distinct lack of content. Or at least any meaningful content. So maybe this totally unscientific list of my observations from using Twitter might give you some idea as tho what to expect – or who to avoid – when the following happens: when someone keeps saying ‘uh, oh – another 1000 followers, well thanks, but not sure why you’re following me, I’m so boring’ they probably are. Unfollow. then again some people will only talk numbers – numbers of followers, tweets, retweets, their position in the most retweeted charts, etc. Unless you’re an accountant and/or define your life by the number of people you follow, avoid. if the person you follow keeps talking about their cat only – perhaps they should get their cat a profile. Unfollow. Twitter is full of specialists. Or ‘specialists’. To become a specialist and to gain and share specialist knowledge takes a while. Or at least longer than ‘since last Tuesday’ if someone follows you and they follow 2,000 other people, but have only one update: “Cheap Viagra/laptop/iPod” – do what you would do with an email with the subject line ‘Cheap Viagra” retweeting is useful, in fact that’s what makes Twitter uniquely fast. But retweeting absolutely everything all the time is like reading a newspaper aloud on a packed train. A bit unsocial. Twitpic is for sharing pictures. Drunken, fuzzy shots you took with your mobile while covering the lens with your finger make for great content only once in a while. Don’t overdo it. Totally unscientific, purely empirical. Agree to disagree. #socialmedia #Twitter

Today I unfollowed someone on Twitter. He is a relatively good journalist (no naming and shaming, sorry), but he is a rubbish Twitter user. Let me explain. As those of you who use Twitter know, it only allows 140 characters per message. Many of us take Twitter for granted now, but even a couple of years ago questions were being asked about its relevance and usefulness. How can you express yourself in 140 characters? Well, we’ve learned pretty quickly how to be concise and informative at the same time; witty and useful. Some people shorten words, some manage to write very precise tweets and remain eloquent within the 140 character limit. There are URL shorteners, image uploaders and other tools which make it possible to condense so much information into 140 characters. Yet some cannot really understand that Twitter is a different medium with different rules. The guy I unfollowed was one of them. He’s a seasoned journalist, has been writing for newspapers for almost two decades, but is unable (or more likely – unwilling) to change his habits for Twitter. He posts very long thoughts which he splits into several, usually four or five tweets. I dip in and out of Twitter and I suspect many others do too. So when I see a half-finished sentence I don’t really understand it, I don’t want to wait around for parts two, three, four and possibly five. It doesn’t make sense. If you follow even a couple of hundred of people, your Twitter stream is constantly changing, constantly moving. Trying to find a tweet that was posted earlier to combine it with the one that has just popped up on your screen doesn’t make sense. Following someone who posts multi-tweet thoughts persistently doesn’t make sense either. Hence the unfollow. In case he’s reading, here are some other alternatives for those pesky longer thoughts which don’t fit into a tweet: Tumblr –  mostly meant for short updates, very conveniently built to allow users to post either just text or video or audio or image or quote or link – or a combination of those. Used to host everything – from image-focused mini-blogs to portfolios and fully-functional blogs. Just like Twitter it allows you to follow other Tumblr users and reblog their stuff. Posterous – just like Tumblr, but allows posting on the go by email. A nice gallery functionality too. Many people use it as their primary blogging platform, but it’s good enough for shorter posts too. Blogging platforms – erm, hello? WordPress, Blogger, Typepad – no, really, this is 2010. Use any of them, really, and then just tell Twitter. It’s that simple, seriously. Just. Don’t. Split. Your. Tweets. It gives me a headache. Related articles by Zemanta The Merger of Blogs and Social Networks (onemanandhisblog.com) Ramon Nuez: I Can’t Live Without Twitter But Tumblr Is Just Better (huffingtonpost.com) What’s Twitter Say About Your Personality? (twitterrati.com) #blog #posterous #tumblr #Twitter