Alternate look at Wadi Rum

As well as it's stunning landscape, Wadi Rum is also home to the semi-nomadic Bedouin people.

Contrary to popular belief, these people are more Westernised than you would think. These images include the Bedoouin town of Wadi Rum.

First look at Wadi Rum in Jordan

Wadi Rum, 30 miles from Aqaba in southern Jordan, is a beautiful valley or red sand and mountains.
These images are from my recent assignment in this amazing desert country.

Diamond Jubilee celebrations - The Queen in Burnley and at Dunsop Bridge

The Queen, she's been leading one's country for 60 spiffing years.

And to mark the end of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations I hereby post, by Royal Appointment, two regal images of Her Majesty. [[posterous-content:pid___0]][[posterous-content:pid___1]]The first was taken in Burnely last month (May 2012) outside of Turf Moor, the football club.

The other picture is from a visit to Dunsop Bridge in 2006.

God Bless Her.

NOTE: She like green.

App test: EveryTrail for mapping journies

In preparation for a photo journey around east Lancashire I am looking at mobile tracking apps for Android phones.

The aim is to produce a map which automatically marks tweets and photo uploads along the route, plus Audioboos, Instagram and so on. I am yet to find an all-in-one solution for this.

I discovered the free version of the EveryTrail app and gave it a go. It is very user friendly, unlike Trip Journal Lite which I am also trialing.

To get going, all you need to do is switch on your mobile phone's GPS tracking (though my phone warns me that data transfers charges may apply). Then, off you go on your journey and the app automatically tracks you.

And this is what it recorded:

Whalley To Fulwood

EveryTrail - Find hiking trails in California and beyond

GOOD: Love the ease of use and the graph it generates of your distance, speed and elevation.

BAD: Questionable accuracy. I did exactly the same journey twice and the distance differed by almost one mile (16.24miles and 17.14miles)

Queen's Diamond Jubilee party at Read and Simonstone, Lancashire

[gallery]

*By the way, one of the boys won the porcelain doll in the Guess the Name competition. She's called Carrie. The other one of the boys was winning the bowling competition when we left.

360-degree panorama photography (review 1)

After seeing some decent results from other users, I've downloaded some 36--degree apps for my Android phone.

Over the next week or so I will test them and report my findings. First up is this one by Sfera-360.com (the web link doesn't mean much but you shuld find the app by searching for Sfera).

 

fullsize

I've taken the code from the webpage link after uplaoding my 360-images, which was taken today in the park outside Clitheroe Castle. 

To use this free app, you have to tap your phone screen and then slowly rotate clockwise. There is a helpful on-screen horizon line to make sure you don't slip from the phone's viewing plane too much.

GOOD: It works quite well. There's audio too - which was a surprise and not always a good thing. Audio can be switched off easily in the app. It also has GPS location.

BAD: The link you get to view your 360-degree panorama online is not the most easy on the eye and does take a while to load. We'll see how the loading time compares with the other apps.

When you upload your link on the app a message tells you that you must buy 'tickets' to post links - with the first five tickets free. To buy 10 tickets (you can't buy a single) costs £1.19. This is not great value.

SUMMARY: Decent quality but may be more cost-effective to get an app where you pay upfront.

Creative Exchange and The Digital Public Space (not for people who read Bella)

The Digital Public Space is the fairly simplistic term given to the part of the online world where we can all be produce work and be creative.

  If anyone has a more simplistic, better informed explanation than that, do drop me a line.

  This place, the DPS, is a fascinating world of new ideas, cross-discipline collaboration and fear.

  It ultimately aims to enhance society in general and the economy specifically.
 

Some embrace it with excitement and exploration, others abuse it with pretty but pointless creations while a handful of academics are looking beyond the bluster and questioning the impact of the digital future on society.

 The Creative Exchange, launched recently at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in Manchester, is the tip of the iceberg in this area of user-generated content (audio, film and photos) and shared technologies.

 This is what some of the seven guest speakers said at the event:

 Bill Thompson (BBC Archives) “Metadata is the key… Everyone keeps their own stuff but shares access to it.”

  Professor Richard Harper (Microsoft) “Facebook timeline… narrative is not linear.”

  Professor Jo Twist (CEO UK Interactive Entertainment) “If we don’t have kids learning code, programming, we are stuffed.”
Mike Ryan (Manchester Digital) ”Menworth Hill* can monitor two million digital communication channels at any one time.”

  But you can’t imagine ideas without the help of visualisations. And here are mine from the launch event at MOSI.

From top to bottom: Professor Rachel Cooper, Mike Ryan, Professor Bill Thompson, Matt Watkins, Professor Neville Brody, Professor Jo Twist, Professor Richard Harper and Clement Renaud.

NOTE: The Creative Exchange is a collaboration between  Lancaster University, Newcastle University and the Royal College of Art.

  *Menworth Hill is an RAF station in North Yorkshire which is operated by US intelligence services.

The social media lie (or the truth is hard to tweet)

[gallery]Social media is a great way for marketing. Social media can help your business. Fact.
Er, no. Social media is at best fun, at worst a tedious distraction.

Now, I’m all for using twitter as information source or Facebook to look at how friends you hardly know are doing.

But the harsh reality is that if you have a product to sell or a service to offer, social media will have no impact whatsoever on your business.

Yes, you can go to conferences, seminars and training days where various organisations and business support outfits will put forward social media success stories.


But the reality is that these organisations cling to these lone ‘successes’ to advocate how brilliant social media is. The truth is different.

Nobody will come in from the cold with a commission because you have tweeted until your #hashtag has wilted. No-one will contact you with work on account of you having 1,000 Facebook lovers.

Those who have 10,000 Twitter followers are the one’s who have experienced success some other way, with social media popularity a happy consequence.

As a photographer, these are the opportunities that have come my way courtesy of social media (and other online listing sites): 


Facebook: Big fat zero
Twitter: Big fat zero
Audioboo: Big fat zero
LinkedIn: Big fat zero
JournalistDirectory.com (listing): Big fat zero
ThePhotoGroup.co.uk (photographer collaboration project): Big Fat zero
Lightstalkers.org (documentary photography listing): Big fat zero
Journalism.co.uk (listing): Big fat zero
Creative Lancashire (council-run business support): Big fat zero
The Long Lens blog: Photography-related products to review, free canvas prints, requests to contribute to other websites (unpaid)
Flickr (photo website): Dozens of requests to use images from councils, PR companies, corporate and consumer magazines – majority have been turned down due to ‘budget restraints.’*

NUJ Freelance Directory (listing): Half a dozen commissions over 15 years
Adobe Photographers Directory (listing): Big fat zero (and I’m not even sure if this is still going)

There are probably other listing sites I have graced, long-since forgotten.
*Budget restraints = we want to use your image but don’t want to pay you.

As a photographer, having a website – and not one which requires a series of mouse clicks and clicking on the cross FOR EVERY PHOTO – is crucial. But a website is pointless if you don’t actively try and push people (and I mean prospective clients) towards it.

The best way to this is by traditional marketing – business card, face-to-face meeting, direct mail, phone call and perhaps even email (but that is another discussion altogether).

Now, social media can be used as an information source for journalists, with Tweetdeck leading the way.

But ffs lol don’t go wasting your time trying to get work through a Facebook page or by producing an endless stream of tweets. Life is passing you by.

#Byebye.

NOTE: Journalist and multimedia expert David Higgerson has a very, very comprehensive list of social media tools here.