I loaded up the Fisheye today with some Black & White film. I’m interested to see the results because a lot of what I like about the Fisheye is the vivid colours you get from the film.
On that note I still have SEVEN rolls of Fisheye from the Oz tour to get developed. It’s tempting just to wait until I get home at the end of the year and then look back at all those photos I’ll have totally forgotten I’d taken. On the other hand I’d be totally paranoid about losing them to the international postage system or airport x-ray machines or general carelessness!
Another factor in this is the cost of processing. For each of the first two rolls I paid (AUD)$5 for processing and $6 for the developing. I didn’t even get prints, just digital copies. So if I’m going to be a film junkie in the long run it would be worth investing in a negatives scanner, thus reducing each roll’s processing costs to $5. That being the case I’m a bit reluctant to fork out $42 now for developing.
This is an app i’ve been wanting to build for a while now, but was held back for a couple of reasons. The usual lack of time, but also some shortcomings in the Last.FM API
The main purpose off the application is to allow people who use Last.FM and Flickr to easily tag their photos with the relevant machine tags. Almost ever since Last.FM started doing event listings (I think), they’ve offered a feature allowing users to feed their own gig photos onto the Event page.
More recently, Flickr decided to complement this feature by displaying a link to Last.FM on the photo page whenever a machine tag exists. This prompted one of the Flickr devs to blog about it which, in turn, prompted me to get my finger out and finish Gig Taggr! [UPDATE: also looks like one of the Last.FM devs mentioned it too!
The main thing that had been holding it back was the lack of an API method to get a user’s past events. This was easily solved by asking for it. Thanks again to vincro and joanofarctan!
As an added bonus, Gig Taggr also lets you geotag the photos while you’re at it, based on the venue location info given by Last.FM. Cashback!
http://gigtaggr.ebotunes.com
Photos tagged using Gig Taggr
http://www.last.fm
With only a few weeks left in London before I move back home to Glasgow, I thought I should fill my time with something quintessentially ‘London’ (thats the first time i’ve used that word, I’m uncertain at best..we’ll see how it goes). For the past year or so I’ve carried my camera with me pretty much everywhere I go, never wanting to miss a good photo opportunity and looking to boost the interestingness of my Flickr photostream.
I’ve always been impressed with Banksy’s stencil graffiti art, but for some reason never had the inclination (nevermind the time) to purposely go in search of it. That is until a few months ago, when I discovered the big yellow flower one is just round the corner from my house – so that got me started. Not long after that we stumbled across the Tesco flag one on Essex Road (which we must have passed a bunch of times, but always waliking in the other direction!).
So now that Ive got some time to kill I’ve started on the purposeful search thing. Despite a plethora of lists and maps and photos all over the web, it has proved difficult to find one definitive, reliable, accurate list of existing Banksy’s artwork. Some have been ‘vandalised’, painted over, removed by local councils. Some have even been auctioned and removed along with the wall they’re painted on! Initially I planned to plot an entire tour of London and set off on my bike to cover it all in a day, but then it came apparent there were pockets of them not too far from home, then i tried to fix my bike and made it worse so it turned into several long walks instead.
One sunny Saturday afternoon I jotted down a list of a few locations around Brick Lane. Either I didnt look hard enough or they’re all gone now. I did end up wandering past the yellow flower one though and found that someone had scrawled some nonsense over the top.
On Monday I had to go into town so it was an ideal time to finally snap his newest ‘One Nation Under CCTV’ piece. Since the weather was decent I thought I’d walk the length of Oxford Street and try and hunt down another older one near Marble Arch. So this turned out quite a productive trip, much more so than the Brick Lane jaunt! Since then I’ve decided the most reliable source of information is from Flickr photo geotags and EXIF data. Sifting through the Banksy pool, I can check for locations on the map, and then check the ‘Taken on…’ date to see if it’s recent and most likely still there. I reckon there’s still a few more good ones out there to find, so keep an eye on my Banksy set on Flickr to see how it goes.
And to those who would criticise my ‘quintessential London’ comment, yes I know that Banksy’s art has appeared in Bristol, Brighton and other places all over the world, and I don’t have that ‘London-is-the-centre-of-the-universe’ complex – but he’s done a LOT in London, and certainly none in Glasgow.
My Banksy set on Flickr
Banksy on Wikipedia
Banksy’s website
Would you believe me if I said that this photo of mine was on display in an art gallery in Paris?
Well, see for yourself! A kind Parisian took it upon themselves to take a picture of my picture and let me know!
I entered the photo as part of the 24 Hours of Flickr project, on May 5th this year. The best pictures submitted were to be chosen by Flickr staff and published in a book. My photo wasn’t chosen for the book unfortunately, but at the various launch events for the book, all the other photos were put on display.
I’d like to thank my Mum and Dad for always believing in me, Fiona for letting me use her camera cos mines is rubbish, and to my lovely subject, for not catching me taking a picture of her.
