Sunderland versus the World (Cup Host City Bid)

I was fortunate to be invited to Sunderland to photograph the Football Association’s delegate visit for the city’s World Cup Host City bid.

Basically that means important people came to have a look round to see if the city could host World Cup football matches in 2018, should England win the bid to host the competition.

The city struck it lucky with the weather but the real gold are the people of the North east. Welcoming, excited, interested and friendly. Photographing them at Herrington Park and Roker and Seaburn seafronts was brilliant.

Then there were the kids from schools across Wearside and the teenage football club visiting on tour from South Africa.

There are a lot of preconceptions about Wearside, Tyne & Wear and the North east, but let me assure you the brilliant coastline is worth the entrance fee alone.*

South Shields to Roker, past Souter Lighthouse and Marsden Grotto, is a surprisingly stunning coastal drive. The North west coast of England does not have any beaches to rival those on Wearside and further north in Northumberland. Formby Point is good, but it can’t beat Roker beach or Marsden when the tide is coming in.

*Entrance to Sunderland’s coast is actually free.

Sunderland versus the World (Cup Host City Bid)

I was fortunate to be invited to Sunderland to photograph the Football Association’s delegate visit for the city’s World Cup Host City bid.

Basically that means important people came to have a look round to see if the city could host World Cup football matches in 2018, should England win the bid to host the competition.

The city struck it lucky with the weather but the real gold are the people of the North east. Welcoming, excited, interested and friendly. Photographing them at Herrington Park and Roker and Seaburn seafronts was brilliant.

Then there were the kids from schools across Wearside and the teenage football club visiting on tour from South Africa.

There are a lot of preconceptions about Wearside, Tyne & Wear and the North east, but let me assure you the brilliant coastline is worth the entrance fee alone.*

South Shields to Roker, past Souter Lighthouse and Marsden Grotto, is a surprisingly stunning coastal drive. The North west coast of England does not have any beaches to rival those on Wearside and further north in Northumberland. Formby Point is good, but it can’t beat Roker beach or Marsden when the tide is coming in.




*Entrance to Sunderland’s coast is actually free.

Sir Bobby Robson Farewell and Goodbye

Sir Bobby Robson died aged 76. A football legend.

Online book publishing: Blurb pdf uploads, easier than lulu (just)

Okay, the good news is that online printing outfit Blurb now accept pdf uploads just like competitor Lulu.

The bad news is that Blurb’s system it is only marginally simpler to get right than Lulu.

Lulu is still a winner when it comes to price, book sizes and styles, having dozens of alternatives to Blurb’s six.

The book’s I’ve seen from Blurb have been of high in quality.

My first attempt to upload a pdf was far from a cake walk so, just to jog my memory, here is a quick guide on how to get it right:

Guide for Standard Portrait, hardcover with dustjacket in InDesign.

Problem one: pdf upload does not work with Internet Explorer. I had to use Firefox.

Problem two: winzip templates download failed to unzip dustjacket template. Error message states that the file name exceeded 260 characters. It didn’t, but I could only unzip these when I manually renamed them in the winzip program.

To make sure you can convert your pdf easily, ready Blurb’s downloadable pdf conversion guide (which is a pdf file). Follow the instructions to add the Blurb pdf template into InDesign’s pdf conversion option.

Problem three: My document sizes for the book and cover pdf’s did not match those stipulated by Blurb.

To conquer this follow these steps (sizes used here are for standard portrait pdf, 44 pages, premium paper, hardcover dustjacket):

1. Use points as a measurement so you can check for faults easier with Blurb’s guidelines.
2. Set Indesign doc size to Trim Size specified by Blurb. Book: 558pt x 702pt. Cover: 1833pt x 720pt.
3. Add Bleed specified by Blurb for top, bottom and outside edges only. The bleed for the dustjacket is for all sides (top, bottom, inside, outsider). Book: 9pt. Cover 9pt.

When my first few uploads failed pre-flight checks Blurb suggested that I may have forgot to include bleeds marks while converting the document to pdf. This was wrong – you don’t have to change anything in Blurb’s pdf conversion template set-up. It’s more than likely you have the incorrect document measurements.

The outputted pdf size for the book itself should be: 567pt x 720pt. The cover should be: 1851pt x 738pt.

At any time you copy one of your pages on to the Blurb template to see if it fits.

CouchSurfing is brilliant

Couchsurfing is a website which makes you realise the internet is brilliant.

A non-profit organisation effectively self-administered by volunteer members, CouchSurfing is a free-to-join website where users agree to put up other travellers visiting their city.

In short this is what happens: You email someone who lives in a city you intend visiting. You ask if you can stay with them. They say yes or no.

No money changes hands. This is feel-good factor surfing.

The same process can also happen in reverse. If you stay with someone they are usually very nice to you. They might cook you a meal, they might show you round their area. If you’re a nice guest you will probably take them a gift of appreciation.

With an average age of 25, the one million plus users (1,152,463 users on Sunday May 31) are perceived to be backpackers, but the sight accommodates are far wider ranger of people. Literally.

I have surfed in mid-America, Prague and India. I also met some CouchSurfers in Warsaw for a drink. Always had a brilliant time. Being driven across the Punjab at 100mph was almost as memorable as the out-of-control naked party held in my honour on the outskirts of Kansas City.

Sadly, the concept is open to abuse. Spam emails and bad experiences are kept to a minimum thanks to a fairly robust screening process for members and a vigilant administration team.

But talking to an Australian couple travelling across India I was made aware how the nature of the sight was being abused. While staying with a CouchSurfer in New Delhi, they were shown round the city by their host. However, after visiting various bars, restaurants and shops, the Indian host appeared to get paid by the owners of the various establishments.

The power of the tourist pound in India is very strong. An India taxi driver can earn as much from one tourist as he could from 20 fares carrying locals. White tourists are targeted as soon as they get off trains or step out of the airport. I can testify to this.

But the cynical manipulation of the travelling CouchSurfer goes against everything the website strives to achieve. Obviously, tackling this problem won’t be easy. Certainly the travellers would have to report the host, and they would be reluctant to do that if he was otherwise charming.

I myself stayed with a CouchSurfer named Hemant and his family for three days in Ludhiana and had no such issues with him. He could not have done more for me and my sick girlfriend Anna, reinforcing the generosity that CocuSurfing has worked so hard to generate around the world.

Shortly after my visit to India I hosted a Slovakian man named Joe and his Hungarian girlfriend. They bought me a bottle of whiskey. Don’t drink the stuff, but the offer was very much appreciated.

I’ve surfed a few times. I’ve hosted twice now. Great experience. I feel I've contributed. As CouchSurfing gets bigger I hope it manages to retain its personal touch.

Paris has more CouchSurfers than any other city – 20,602 - followed by London (17,856), Berlin (14691), Montreal (13,650) and Vienna (9,607). Just over 30per cent of CouchSurfers (353,330) had couches available at the time of checking. Over 230 countries are represented, and 59,199 cities have at least one CouchSurfer. The least spoken language by CouchSurfers is Lojban (four members).

Beggars belief

I visited India for ten days. I went to a lovely wedding, explored Ludhiana, walked round the Golden Temple at Amritsar and visited Chandigarh. To top it all off I spent two nights in the fabulous Himalayan mountain town of Nainital.

It was quite and amazing experience. So why do I keep questioning if I should be enjoying myself in this exceptional multi-cultural country?

The answer is poverty. Deprivation is not exclusive to India but this country holds a sizeable chunk of the worlds homeless, hungry and humiliated.

India has a fat-growing economy built on industry, particularly manufacturing. But still it harbours huge misery and desperation.

You see it immediately from the train when you leave New Delhi Station heading north. Amongst the litter-strewn wage ground between the track and slums squat dozens of human beings in what acts as their open-air toilets. They shit on the ground.

The stench of the slums, even from 50 metres away in Agra is unbearable. So unbearable I didn’t dare go near.

And the beggars at every street junction and corner, who traipse up and down the trains (first-class excluded) or, like these two girls pictured (above), who relentlessly smile into carriages in the desperate hope of a few rupees.

I gave them a (large) packet of crisps and some biscuits. Does that justify taking the photograph?

Possibly not. But at least writing about it and showing this photo is better than ignoring it. Do I sound like Bono?

Road to hell (yes, it's in India)

I remember Alan Whicker. I’ve seen Clive James. I watch Michael Palin. I knew what to expect in India. So I reckoned anyway. Nothing can prepare you for the stress of the roads.

It’s not so much the hustle and bustle and bump of traffic in the congested cities, it’s the torturous journies between towns that leave your brain battered and bruised.

Imagine travelling from Manchester to Newcastle or London to Leeds on a country road which regularly descends into a dirt track and which is littered with cows, horses and carts, huge trucks, motorcycles, rickshaws and cars all travelling on both sides of the road, often four abreast at 90mph, while oncoming traffic whizzes towards you.

For someone who prides himself on not getting stressed-out this was too stressful to bear.

Ludhiana to Chandigarh. Three hours each way. Nightmare. The booting and braking of my friend Hemant on dusty tracks left me scared of Ford Fusion’s for life. I decided to shut my eyes for almost the entire journey back to Ludhiana.

Ludhiana to Amritsar. Four hours each way. Absolutely horrendous. The Ayrton Senna-style drive to Amritsar was bad enough- we were late for the India/Pakistan border closing ceremony at Wagah. But coming back in the dark was emotionally devastating. Parts of this journey on the famous Grand Trunk Road were on dual carriageways. Unfortunately, dual carriageways do not stop some trucks from driving the wrong way down them. And then there was the Holy Cow! moment when Hemant blackspotted his Fusion’s tyres when Daisy the cow meandered into our 80mph path on a typically unlit piece of carriageway.

Ludhiana to Corbett National park. Fifteen hours in a mini bus. Along some of the bumpiest roads ever misconstructed. This was a nightmare from start to finish. So traumatised I was by this that my final journey, intended to be from Nainital to Delhi in this very same minibus was dumped in favour of the train. A decision I did not live to regret.

India has a huge amount to offer. Temples, mountains, culture by the bucketloads and enough diahorrea to keep everyone busy. But the roads, the speed and the fearless head-on driving give this monumental country it’s own unique selling point.

Caviar, computers and photography

Digital photography is as much as computers as cameras. The problem is that there is a mind-boggling assortment of components to choose from and some have appalling performance and reliability records.

And, almost without exception, there are no easy guides to help photographers choose the best photo-editing software, hard drives, monitors, laptops or portable storage devices.

I make my purchases after mind-numbing internet searches. Often the best-rated pieces are impossible to get hold of in the UK. But, after several exhaustive searches, reviewing reviews and comparing Top 10 lists, sometimes I feel like I know which is the best component to buy.

Internal hard drives

Loads of contradictory information here. I bought the Western Digital Caviar 1000gb (1 terabyte if you're clever)*. Seems to be the most reliable drives around.

Samsung (Spinpoint T Series HD501LJ) and several Hitachi Deskstar's get good reviews. The 7K750 is the highest rated of the lot by pcworld.com but it appears to be unavailable in the UK.

But Western Digital Cavier's perform well in some reviews and very well in others, so that's the one I plumped for.

From my limited knowledge I would have gone for a Seagate drive. They have always had a good reputation. But pcworld do not give them much respect and some message board postings state that the reliability has nosedived since the company acquired rival Maxtor (who again have a poor reputation).

One of my most popular postings on this blog has been a rather long guide to publishing a book through lulu.com. I had such stupifying problems when I first tried to upload my first book that I wrote the blog guide for future reference. This blog is written for the same reasons.

PC protection:

For those of you, like me, too stupid to have bought a Mac, PC protection is essential.
The top-rated free PC protection software I have found. Zone Alarm firewall and Avira anti-virus. Both come recommended by British Consumer Association magazine Which? (though Avira is not a Best Buy). AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is also very highly-rated by Which?.

And finally, you can use internal hard drives as plug-in data storage machines with the USB/eSATA Cradle from http://www.storagedepot.co.uk/. Costs about £30 after postage, but is it is a much cheaper and faster solution than using caddy's.

* The Western Digital WD10EADS Caviar Green 1tb SATAII 32Mb Cache 3.5 Inch Green Power OEM Internal Hard Drive cost me £89.99 from Amazon.co.uk.

Road to hell (yes, it's in India)

I remember Alan Whicker. I’ve seen Clive James. I watch Michael Palin. I knew what to expect in India. So I reckoned anyway. Nothing can prepare you for the stress of the roads.

It’s not so much the hustle and bustle and bump of traffic in the congested cities, it’s the torturous journies between towns that leave your brain battered and bruised.

Imagine travelling from Manchester to Newcastle or London to Leeds on a country road which regularly descends into a dirt track and which is littered with cows, horses and carts, huge trucks, motorcycles, rickshaws and cars all travelling on both sides of the road, often four abreast at 90mph, while oncoming traffic whizzes towards you.

For someone who prides himself on not getting stressed-out this was too stressful to bear.

Ludhiana to Chandigarh. Three hours each way. Nightmare. The booting and braking of my friend Hemant on dusty tracks left me scared of Ford Fusion’s for life. I decided to shut my eyes for almost the entire journey back to Ludhiana.

Ludhiana to Amritsar. Four hours each way. Absolutely horrendous. The Ayrton Senna-style drive to Amritsar was bad enough- we were late for the India/Pakistan border closing ceremony at Wagah. But coming back in the dark was emotionally devastating. Parts of this journey on the famous Grand Trunk Road were on dual carriageways. Unfortunately, dual carriageways do not stop some trucks from driving the wrong way down them. And then there was the Holy Cow! moment when Hemant blackspotted his Fusion’s tyres when Daisy the cow meandered into our 80mph path on a typically unlit piece of carriageway.

Ludhiana to Corbett National park. Fifteen hours in a mini bus. Along some of the bumpiest roads ever misconstructed. This was a nightmare from start to finish. So traumatised I was by this that my final journey, intended to be from Nainital to Delhi in this very same minibus was dumped in favour of the train. A decision I did not live to regret.

India has a huge amount to offer. Temples, mountains, culture by the bucketloads and enough diahorrea to keep everyone busy. But the roads, the speed and the fearless head-on driving give this monumental country it’s own unique selling point.

Taj Mahal, Agra, India

Mother and son having a rest at the back of the Taj Mahal on Sunday morning May 3, 2009.