Photography ban on London buses (and in bus stops)

More trouble in London for photographers where the message is: bad photography is fine.

Transport for London (TfL) initially said that photography is forbidden on its buses and in bus shelters. After backtracking they stated that permission must be sought if you want to take photos over a ‘prolonged period’. It’s not clear if a ‘prolonged period’ refers to 1/60th sec or 1/125th sec.

A TfL spokesman added that a ‘quick snap’ is fine.
This echoes the stance of organisers of the London 2012 Olympics who will allow cameras into stadiums - as long as they don’t look professional.

So, try and take a professional, creative documentary shot on a bus or in a sports stadium in London and you could find yourself in a police cell or, worse, being fired upon by a water canon.

Is it just me or are major organisations, events organisers and councils eager to leave a legacy of bad photography for future generations to look back on?

Why should the amount of money someone spends on a camera dictate if they should be allowed to use it what are essentially public places?

We will soon be facing the bizarre scenario of having better documentary images from the 1950s and 1960s than we do in the 2010s.

National No Smoking Day

It's Wednesday March 14, 2012.
In Britain, this is National No Smoking Day.
To celebrate here is a photograph of someone not smoking.

Taken in Bolton in 2007.

The power of pictures (WARNING: Male and female gender debate)

Photography influences the perceived power of man and women.

Very basic point, this. But quite interesting.

Any photographer knows that taking an image of someone from a low level – looking up at them – increases the perception of strength.

Shoot from a higher vantage point above and you get the opposite effect. It’s a basic photography principle.

Or, to put it another way, the low viewpoint makes them look more powerful.

Researchers from several European universities led by the Rotterdam School of Management* found that more men were shot from a low viewpoint than women 

This, the researchers argue, leads to a reinforcing of male and female stereotypes.

Paraphrasing here, it implies that:

Assuming that this results in more photographs of women shot from above being used in advertisements, magazines and newspapers, the media might unintentionally increase our perception that men are powerful and women are not. This strengthens our stereotyped ideas that women cannot become leaders, as our attitudes towards, and judgment about, other people are strongly influenced by the way they are portrayed in the media.

Researchers go on to state that, gender aside, powerful individuals are more likely to be portrayed from below while the powerless get a higher viewpoint. This finding is rather predictable and not that interesting.

Media images were analysed from the collection of CORBIS®, Time Magazine, and World Press Pictures.

*Those researchers and universities in full: Dr Steffen R. Giessner, Associate Professor at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM), and his colleagues Professor Michelle Ryan (University of Exeter, Exeter), Dr Thomas Schubert (ISCTE, Lisbon), and Dr Niels van Quaquebeke (Kuehne Logistics University, Hamburg).

PICTURED: Armwrestlers from Blackburn, Lancashire, taken from a low viewpoint to emphasise strength and power.

ALERT: Photography ban in central London

More bad news for photographers with big cameras in London.

Not content with being part of an Olympics plot to rob us unofficial (uncredited) photographers the right to take our big cameras into London 2012 venues, there are now plans to bring in costly permits for those wanting to take photographs around Trafalgar and Parliament Squares.

Having photographed in both these locations for projects, I can put my hand on my heart and say: This is bloody outrageous.

A permit to photograph one of the world’s major tourist destinations? And you think things are bad in France?

In short, these are the plans of the Greater London Assembly: To introduce new bye-laws requiring permits for commercial photography and filming.

As well as being a huge kick in the teeth to the media industry who will no doubt go to public spaces elsewhere until a city-wide permit is required, this will also surely impact on the amateur and documentary photographer.

For a start, place your own tripod in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square and see how fast the wardens swarm on you.

Even if the tripod is for your own personal photography won’t matter. You will be challenged, bloc ked and made to feel like a terrorist on an al-Qaeda reconnaissance mission.

I would argue that even if the tripod was put there by a professional, no-one should be reprimanded. Shouldn’t the creative industries be encouraged?

Trafalgar Square is a public place. Why would the GLA want to alienate photographers – which include tourists – in a city which relies so heavily on tourism?

I have been challenged by security guards on three separate visits to London in recent years. Taking photos in Rome, Istanbul, Antwerp, Vienna and Venice I received no such negative attention. London Town is going backwards.

At present English Heritage patrol Trafalgar Square, hunting professional photographers while seemingly ignoring tourists.

Will photographers now need to wear Bermuda shorts and pose as tourists to do their work?

The GLA have made noises that news photographers will not be stopped. But how is a warden going to know the difference. There are already strict guidelines for what the police can and, more importantly, can’t do to photographers – yet some ignorant police officers still frequently act illegally.

This plan is the recipe for the same disaster.

 

The Photographers Gallery in London sets date to re-open

After more delays than a Sunday train trip on the East Coast Main Line, The Photographers' Gallery in London has set an opening date: May 19, 2012.

Images were last able to be gawped at in September 2010. The building is on Ramillies Street which is accessible through a narrow walkway from Oxford Street. 

The visionary new building was designed by Irish architects O'Donnell + Tuomey. I'm not sure if you've got them to thank or blame for the delay. It was supposed to re-open in 2011.

Perhaps not always showing the best exhibitions in London, The Photographers' Gallery at least always had the best book shop in the British Isles. The re-opening is worth it for that alone.

But, of course, the big question concerns a more pressing issue: Will the new building house a souped-up, improved and enticing new coffee shop?

The previous cafe in the Ramillies Street building was not a patch on the coffee house at its the old venue on Great Newport Street.

I have spoke previously about the need for photography galleries to sell tea and coffee to attract visitors.

Photography fans in Britain await May 19 with parched tongues.

Midland Hotel in Morecambe Lancashire, a retrospective

The Midland Hotel in Morecambe is a Grade II listed building which has captured public fascination in recent years. It's the Art Deco style which has made it so loved.
Restored in 2008 by Urban Splash, it had been on its way to ruin after closing down several years earlier.
The Midland, designed by architect Oliver hill and sculptured by Eric Gill, was built in 1933 - though there has been a hotel on the site since 1848.
An episode of the TV show Poirot was filmed there in 1989.
These images were taken in the late 1990s (and possibly the year 2000). Do Not Use Without Permission.

Blackpool's Comedy Carpet

Created by artist Godron Young, Blackpool's Comedy Carpet is the town's latest public art project aimed at improving the promenade and changing people's perception of the town.

It features jokes, catchphrases and one-liners from over 1,000 comedy legends, from W.C Fields to Vic Reeves, and including Peter Cook, Dame Edna and any comedian you ever forgot.

Young was helped by Blackpool's comedy expert Barry Band, historian and writer Graham McCann, and on the typography and layout by graphic designer Andy Altmann of Why Not Associates. It was installed by Andrew Sawyer and Russ Coleman.

The carpet is a great effort from Blackpool Council (ReBlackpool), easily the best thing they've done since the giant mirrorball which was unveiled in 2002.

And finally for you technical lovers, hard facts about the carpet: Five years in the making. Each of the 160,000+ letters has been individually cut from 30mm solid granite or cobalt blue concrete. They've been arranged into over 300 slabs and then cast into white concrete panels.

The complicated world of self-publishing an ephotobook

Self-publishing took a turn for the better almost a decade ago.

Digital printing presses enabled shorter than short print runs – you could now print and order a single copy of your own book for little more than the price of a paperback in Waterstones.*

The first of these new innovators were Lulu, which came to life in 2004. Two years later Blurb emerged. In my experience these two have been by far the cheapest self-publishers, Lulu giving greater versatility, Blurb slightly better quality (certainly in these early days).

I first used the services of both in 2007. From experience I can tell you that converting files to pdfs for printing was not an easy process. In some ways it still is not but the process has improved.

My first and soon to be republished book, Flashes to Ashes, was designed on Microsoft Publisher (a program never used again) and led to many hours of headaches before I finally cracked the pdf-making process. This included a couple of frantic nights were the converted pdf size was out-putting at 150gb when 150gb hard-drives were like gold dust.

I have to say the quality of printing and cut for full-bleed Lulu books was hugely variable in those days. I was not impressed on numerous occasions and had to have orders reprinted on several occassions.

But soon the printed self-published photo book will be superceded  by the digital ephotobook – once the ability to produce digital editions is cracked.

And here we come to the big problem: photo books do not convert digitally anywhere near as easily as novels. The iPad, iPhone, Kindle and eReaders are crying out for photo books.

It was at the beginning of 2010 that Amazon’s digital book sales outstripped its paper versions for the first time. But photo books are conspicuous by their absence in the digital world.

Getting a photo book out there as a digital ephoto book for iPad’s iBook, Kindle (which has a colour Kindle Fire on its way) and Barnes & Noble’s absurdly-named NOOK is, to use my best English accent, a bloody nightmare darling.

So here is my what you can and can’t do digitally with photo books now (November 2011)

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BLURB

Blurb (since October 2011) allow you to produce epub photo books for the iPad and iPhone. This can be done ONLY through their Bookify or BookSmart software

As yet, Blurb can’t convert a pdf into an epub book.

And Blurb do NOT have the facility to sell the book for you on iTunes (although there are plans for 

this).

When they sort out these two issues, they will be THE place to convert photobooks.

LULU

Lulu are one of several official aggregators for iTunes, meaning you can convert an epub book with them and sell it on iTunes – but this service is not designed for photobooks. Books must be converted from Microsoft Word. Pdfs do not convert.

Other iTunes aggregators are: Ingram, inscribe Digital, LibreDigital and Smashwords. Bookwire is the only Europe-based official aggregator but those of us based in Europe do not have to use them. Which is a good job as their website is written in German.

Lulu supply an ISBN number 

DO IT YOUR SELF

You can create your own iPad book but it’s very complicated. And if you don’t have a MAC you can’t create the epub file or (if you don’t have an iPad) test it properly).

There is a great guide here from Blurb.

You must buy and supply your own ISBN number.

CREATESPACE

Amazon’s own self-publishing house allows you to sell directly to their website (the world’s greatest book seller) and around the world through it’s Expanded Distribution Channel.

Their book sizes are really designed for novels only. This means no real choice of paper and they don’t have many book sizes to chose from. If you opt for one of non-industry standard sizes, these books can’t be sold around the world in their Expanded Distribution Channel.

And as an aside, the profit margins for hard copy books sold through their EDC is poor.

CreateSpace supply an ISBN number. 

LIGHTNING SOURCE

Perhaps the most non-user friendly application process which involves printing out several pdfs signing them and posting them to the office closest to you (yes, there is one in the UK). Yes, sending applications in the post does still happen. On the plus side, you do get friendly emails sent by real people.

You must buy and supply your own ISBN number.

iTUNES CONNECT

You can submit your own books to iTunes Connect BUT you must pass a stupendous application process.

Just for starters you must have an American IRS tax number. iTunes support and advice in how to do this is appalling.

If you are not resident in the US this means sending a form (I think it’s a W-7 but their website and iTunes own advice is contradictory in places) by post. This process takes two months and includes getting copies of your ID (i.e. passport) signed by US notified officials. You may have to visit your local US Embassy to do this.

You cannot email the IRS or your US Embassy.

Once you’ve got your IRS number you submit to iTunes Connect. Success is at their discretion and also can only be done on an AppleMac running OS X 10.5.8 or later. I have to admit I find this stipulation very wrong and feel Apple should be forced to drop it by the Monopolies Commission, Competition Commission or any such similarly silly-named organisations in the free world.

You must buy and supply your own ISBN number.

THE END

*Waterstones is book shop a bit like the Barnes and Noble book store.

NOTE: You can buy my digital book, 6x9, for iPad from Blurb here: http://bit.ly/6x9iPad

It is available in hard copy format from both Blurb and CreateSpace – or from Amazon in the US. 

 

Oi ya b*st*rds you've stolen my pug picture

At the time of writing, this photo has had 992 comments on Facebook, 1,730 likes and been shared 210 times. It’s on the Facebook page of the ASPCA, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The ASPCA did not seek or gain permission to use the image.
Using TinEye, the reverse image search engine, I found four other websites have published the image. There are probably more out there.
For any creative, copyright is crucial. It protects their work and helps ensure they earn money from it. If a photographer (whatever their level of ability or professionalism) lets any organisation use any image for free they are an idiot photographer.
They are allowing flattery – or vanity – to cloud their judgement and they devalue the commodity of the photograph for the entire industry. If anyone would like a more in-depth discussion on this then please get in touch.

That’s not to say I am draconian about my images. I have, on occasion, allowed free use of my images for what I deem worthy causes. Indeed I have allowed this image to be used by a dog blog website in Ottawa, Canada.
What I have never done is allowed commercial businesses or similar organisations to use my images for free and, believe me, I’ve had many requests.
I allowed the dog blog to use it because they asked nicely. And the important thing is that they do ask. Nicely.
The ASPCA, along with 5minute5.com, untoldenterainment.com, yazarkafe.hurriyet.com (don’t ask) and electricgrandmother.com never asked for permission to use the image. If they found it on google, they may have had difficulty discovering the author as the embedded IPTC information has been stripped out.
But that is no excuse for a failure to reply to emails when contacted about the use of unauthorised images. I emailed all four websites, asking them to contact me about publishing this image without permission. Only 5minute5.com replied, offering an apologetic email and the offer to remove the image or credit it.
I’m particularly annoyed that the ASPCA, a reputable organisation, has not replied to my email. Too busy searching for other images to steal?
I have reported them to Facebook and have yet to see the outcome of that. Don't fail me Facebook.
I took this photo several years ago at my parent’s house in Newcastle. The pug is called Arthur. The french fries are called chips.

Palm trees in the Czech Republic

Looking up at some palm trees in Luxor, Egypt. I took this photo in 2005.
Sitting on the banks of the Nile, shielding under the trees from the hot midday sun. The image represents some sort of paradise.
The reality is slightly different. I was lying on my back on carefully cultivated grass in the hotel grounds of Sofitel Luxor. If you look closely, you can see a hotel speaker nailed to one of the trees.
A few months after I took the photo I did the decent thing and uploaded it to flickr, the amazingly friendly, hugely addictive photo-sharing website.
Six years later and it has enjoyed a modest 1,166 views. But in the last few months it has regularly been my most viewed picture of the day. I have 1,511 images on flickr.
Why is a photo, uploaded in September 2005, still being viewed half a dozen times a day? No idea. It’s an example of the brilliance and quirkiness of flickr.
What I do know is that a media website in the Czech Republic – tn.cz - stole the image from flickr to use as the cover image for an advert slideshow above a story which has something to do with palm trees.
You can see my stolen image on the screengrab (below).
Anyone who can read Czech who would like to do a translation or contact these thieving sh!ts and demand compensation, drop me a line.

NOTE: How did I find out about the use of my images by tn.cz? I used the fantastic reverse image search called TinEye.
A free online search tool, you can submit one of your images and TinEye will search for it and modified versions on millions of websites around the world.
It was the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It's very clever.