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).

 

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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.

Future journalism students: Don't sign up for a training course (you're wasting your time)

In 2002, it was estimated there were 70,000 journalists working in the UK. In 2010, media expert Francois Nel estimated this figure to have fallen to 40,000.
  The most recent figures I can find for the number of journalism students is 2009 when 13,229 wannabes applied for courses. The same article in The Guardian gives anecdotal evidence that only 50 per cent of journalism graduates can expect to get a job.
  What I do know is that in 2012 this 50 per cent figure is likely to have decreased significantly.
  I have witnessed first-hand redundancies and huge downsizing of editorial offices in the national and local print media. Job losses have been almost faultlessly constant over the last five years and the rate of redundancies – and of papers going from daily to weekly – is becoming more rapid.
  And the question which keeps bouncing around my head is simple – why are universities still churning out graduate journalists when the jobs market has dried up?
  As with most of my writing on journalism, the same principles and question apply to editorial photography, two professions inexorably linked*.
  I was totally baffled when I read Chris Frost’s education article in the NUJ’s The Journalist magazine.
  Frost, a professor in journalism, wrote extensively about issues of journalism training for teachers and students, while totally failing to address the lack of jobs issue. I felt I was reading a propaganda piece for university journalism study.
  I do know why universities put on journalism and photography courses. They are popular, even with the introduction of tuition fees. The problem is universities look at the money they can rake in, not the actual prospects of the individual students.
  In America, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes told students not to go into journalism if they want to change the world. It’s a bleak picture whichever way you look.
  I was asked recently for advice about getting into journalism. Can you guess what I said? It was along the lines of: Don’t be f***ing stupid, get yourself another career.
And just to be clear, I have worked as a freelance journalist for nearly 20 years and have written for more magazines and newspapers that have died than any of you lot. 
*NOTE: I'm only talking about editorial photography here. Other forms of photography have not been plunged crisis.

Philadelphia Freeze or Problems photographing the police in America

NOT THE ARTICLE:
Following my report on photography bans in central London and at the 2012 Olympics in the same city I was emailed by a contact in America about a recent incident.
It seems there are issues about taking photographs of the police in Philadelphia.

THE ARTICLE:

When a Philadelphia photojournalism student took an image of a police officer he never expected to be held in custody for 24 hours.

When the student’s girlfriend picked up the camera that had fallen to the ground she never expected to be banged up for 18 hours. And fined. And made to do 12 hours community service (and, yes, I am talking about the girlfriend).

The land of freedom and opportunity. Do me a favour, luv.
Ian Van Kuyk’s mistake was to assert his right to photograph in the public domain when a police officer told him to stop.

The police officer is reported to have said: “Public domain, yeah we’ve heard that before!” then apparently knocking the student to the ground.
Van Kuyk’s subsequent arrest is as comical as it is worrying. For the record, the United States of America has a pretty good record on photography in public (except for bizarre proposals of a ban in New York City five years ago).

These are the photography facts of America right now: Though laws can vary in their leniency from state to state, in America it is generally legal to photograph anything and anyone on any public property, with some exceptions made for military installations.

Photographing a tourist attraction, whether publicly or privately owned, is generally considered legal, unless explicitly prohibited by posted signs (NOTE: as usual when I am talking about photographing, the same rules apply to filming/videoing).

Sensible stuff this. And so it should be. Would any country or city be stupid enough to ban photography at their major tourist areas?

If you see me in London, please don’t take my photograph.

You should go to Ayoka: Photomonth 2011 review

[gallery]

The 2011 East London Photography Festival exhibited some fantastic photo projects, not least my own.

But the highlight for me was visiting a tiny charity shop a few hundred yards east of Bethnal Green Underground.

Suke Driver’s exhibition in Ayoka was as memorable for its venue as it was for the images themselves.

Dress Up London documented people… well, the title is kind of self-explanatory. People dressing up for fun, fashion, sport, protests.

The exhibition was Ayoka’s first. In 2012 the venue is surely to be coveted by photographers looking for an innovative exhibition space.