bikes and things

I’ve managed to get another awesome print swap sorted in the last few weeks. I’ve done a few of these before, some have worked out well, some have ended up with me just giving a print away (or paying for one upfront) and not getting anything else back. But this one has been very successful.

Print swapping is a superb way of getting decent art or photography on the walls for not a lot of money. It’s just the cost of a print and some postage obviously. However it’s a bit of a nervous process asking someone whose work you admire to swap with you. After you’ve got over this then it’s simply a matter of agreeing print sizes, which shot they want and what type of paper or print process. This time I swapped a picture of Corbusier’s Saint-Pierre Firminy, which was shot on an Olympus OM-20, 50mm ƒ1.8 and Ilford HP5 400, with Daniel’s shot of the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank. His was shot on a slightly larger 4×5 HP5 sheet of film – the quality shows too.

Can’t wait to get mine framed and on the wall with the others. I have a few more planned too but can’t afford the framing so will have to stagger them.

I was pleasantly pleased to see this last night on my bus ride home from a quick shoot in Queens Park. Great to see Ström Architects getting such great publicity and obviously nice to see my shots there too.

Incredible to see my current camera of choice laid out in all its complex technical and engineering beauty in a “things organised neatly” style. Amazing to think of the precision of design that goes into this.

Interestingly enough I couldn’t find a decent enough image to use on this blog post and the embedding options at 500px aren’t great. So for $2.99 I bought this image to use. My currency converter of choice says that it’s £1.88 which is fairly reasonable really. Less than the price of a coffee to reward a photographer for their hard work. Plus I get to get a decent high res file at 1920px wide for my desktop background.

Image © Martin Kozák

Via PetaPixel

I thought I’d get myself a new little camera bag after got back from my meeting in Oxford this morning. So off to Amazon I went and ordered a Billingham bag but the option on the side said that a third party seller would do it a bit cheaper with free postage. So great, click the button, order, get back on with work.

Then the phone rings.

Them: Hello, it’s about your bag.
Me: You don’t have it in stock right?
Them: No sir, are you going to be in your office for another hour or so?
Me: Yes of course, until 6pm.
Them: Great, we’ll stick it on a bike now.

Sure enough a nice cycle courier arrived with my bag. The shop? Team Work on Foley Street. I think they’ll be my new favourite camera shop from now on. Bye bye Calumet.

This image has been making most of the photographers I know, architectural and otherwise, a bit weak at the knees recently. It’s shot by Iwan Baan who is arguably the worlds best Architectural Photographer – for now. The image is the kind of thing that just wouldn’t have the same impact as shot with Instagram as some of the New York press have been doing, and which I argued against recently. The original article neatly describes their reasons for running the image as well the difficulties they faced keeping their publishing workflow going when all their infrastructure was down.

Another article has emerged this morning which is an interview with Baan himself discussing how he actually got the image. Some of the technical details read a little like a Canon ad but it’s interesting nonetheless. Someone should have told him that he could have had such high ISO four years ago with a Nikon D3S!

Quick shot from a walk around yesterday with Emma. I updated the firmware on the X100 and I seem to be enjoying using it much much more now that some of the niggles have gone away. I still get lots of adoring glances for it when I have it round my neck which is amusing. You can always spot the camera nerd as they glance at it. Seems to be a real classic of a camera for me.

Another one of those photo projects which instantly rings the “why the hell didn’t I think of that” bell in my mind. Beautifully executed with a great sense of depth to all of the images. So enjoyable going through the sheer number of images on his site. A more in depth interview is also available over at It’s Nice That.

A few of my favourites below.

All images © Richard Hooker

Whilst I’m a massive fan of Instagram I do feel a bit weird when I see it being used for photojournalism. For instance the other day I saw that a journalist I follow on Twitter was using it to show images of an EDL demonstration he was covering. I feel it’s completely the wrong medium for something like that but there’s also a wider issue of recording historical events with what is essentially a crappy square photo with a filter on at poor resolution.

This is neatly summed up in a blog post by photographer Kenneth Jarecke noting on the lack of quality images during the recent storm in the US.

Link via Dave Morris.

I’ve done this ride a few times, start at the Design Museum and pick up the Thames Path all the way to Greenwich and beyond. Once I even ended up at the Woolwich Ferry and cycled back along the North side. This time it was only to past Greenwich and back but still good to get out after a prolonged period of working late to get my project out to tender.

I also wanted to re-engage with my camera after just using it for paid work I thought I’d do some for pleasure. Just for me and see what I could find, a kind of a mini project in a day. Taking the tripod and camera on my bike way fairly hard work but well worth the effort to document some of the spaces along the South side of the Thames. Unfortunately I didn’t make very fast progress on my bike as I kept on seeing things to take pictures of.

The context of the ride is slightly strange – going from the wealthy areas surrounding the Design Museum through some rougher looking estates, past light and heavy industry, gravel pits, vents from tunnels, new cheap looking housing schemes and a few tourist attractions in between. There were reminders of industry past throughout as well as the looming presence of Canary Wharf and newer developments.

I couldn’t have picked a nicer day, misty at first but brighter later with some surreal Autumn light towards the end of the day. Some of the images were a bit off due to the swing on the lens being engaged when I grabbed it out of my bag but I’m pleased with the selection I uploaded to Flickr late last night.

One of the nicest things was getting out on my bike and being totally relaxed. I didn’t rush but cycled at my own pace, looking around and taking it all in. I also met a few interesting characters along the way including an Indian couple over here to see the sights who were fascinated by the camera and also my bike. A few of my favourite images are below. I might do this as a regular thing and just pick a different route each time and see what I come across. Maybe a lighter tripod next time though.

And to top it all off I got the Thames Clipper back from Greenwich seeing all the same sights from a completely different viewpoint. A superb day out.

I was going to post about this after this Wired article came out which included a couple of decent photos of the interior with those fantastic coloured pipes. Then It’s nice that found a few more photos.

Seems like a superb commission to get – be the first official photographer within Google’s data centres, especially if you are anyway nerdy. I would love to shoot something like this (and get paid for it). The scale of it is ridiculous as well as those pipes being colour coded which reminds me of an excerpt from the Steve Jobs bio where his first factory in the US is done out like this. All the robots painted Apple colours of the time. The Google pipes almost seem Willy Wonka like in a way.

All images © Connie Zhou

There’s also a walk through video which is also pretty interesting.