I really don’t like the new update to the Flickr app. Why have they made it so that the thumbnail images are all cropped to square when the previous version respected the aspect ratio of the photographs. I know I crop my images to square for my galleries on this blog, but that’s my choice and I crop selectively, not just using whatever happens to be in the middle of the image. Read more…

This is a set of photographs I took at Billingsgate Fish Market in 1975 when I was a student at the London College of Printing. They were taken for one of the journalist students who was doing a series of articles on the dying London markets. Read more…

A couple of days ago I was doing some more panoramic photography in my ongoing series of Cornish churches. In St Winnow church, which stands on the bank of the River Fowey, are some really nice medieval carved bench ends. The best two were of a ship in a storm and a drunken man wearing a Cornish kilt. In the ship in a storm you can see a demon in the sky with his cheeks puffed out blowing up the storm while four men cower in the boat. And the drunken man is swigging what is presumably cider from the bottle. Read more…

I was walking through Stockwell today when I saw a ghost sign that’s been fairly recently repainted. If you look closely you can just see a faint trace of the old sign showing through. I’ve done a couple of screen grabs from Google Street View which shows how the sign used to look about a year ago.

Sean O’Shea has produced an iPhone app of all of the English Heritage London Blue Plaques using the data that I collated for my Blue Plaques map. The app is free, so no reason not to download it now and start looking round London in a different way.

There are over 850 EH blue plaques, concentrated mainly in central London, but some of them go out as far as Harrow or Bexley.

A version of the app optimised for iPad will be following soon as the 1.1 upgrade, and if the app proves popular we are hoping that there will be an Android version as well.

The app has its own Twitter feed, so you can check for news and updates there. And I’ll be blogging about any future news if you want to follow here.

Edit: 7 Feb 2015

There’s now an Android version of the app as well.

Photo © Yousuf Karsh

RIP Madiba

I’ve just found out that I’ve had one of my photos accepted for the 2014 Ghostsigns Calendar. Very chuffed! Mind you, I only just made it in 12th place.

In case you’re wondering a chaudronnerie and a serrurerie is a boilermaker and a locksmith, selling new and used boilers, stills and piping.

I went to Constantine Bay yesterday morning and in between the heavy showers and gusting winds I managed to take a few nice photos. I was particularly pleased with this one – and yes, I thought it would work well in black & white as I was taking it.

Click on the photo to see some more of the photos on my Flickr feed.

The myriad choices of his fate
Set themselves out upon a plate
For him to choose
What had he to lose

Not a ghost bloodied country
All covered with sleep
Where the black angel did weep
Not an old city street in the east
Gone to choose

And wandering’s brother
Walked on through the night
With his hair in his face
On a long splintered cut from the knife
of G T

The rally man’s patter ran on through the dawn
Until we said so long
To his skull
shrill yell

Shining brightly red-rimmed and
Red-lined with the time
Infused with the choice of the mind
On ice skates scraping chunks
From the bells

Cut mouth bleeding razor’s
Forgetting the pain
Antiseptic remains cool goodbye
So you fly
To the cosy brown snow of the east
Gone to choose
choose again

Sacrificials remains make it hard to forget
Where you come from
The stools of your eyes
Serve to realize fame
choose again

And roverman’s refrain of the sacrilege recluse
For the loss of a horse
Went the bowels and a tail of a rat
Come again
choose to go

And if epiphany’s terror reduced you to shame
Have your head bobbed and weaved
Choose a side
to be on

If the stone glances off
Split didactics in two
Leave the colours of the mouse trails
Don’t scream, try between
If you choose, if you choose, try to lose
For the loss of remain come and start

Start the game
i chi chi
chi chi i
Chi chi chi
ka ta koh
Choose to choose
Choose to choose, choose to go

RIP Lou Reed (1942-2013)

I’ve just come back from an amazing trip to Albi in south-west France. We stayed in a really nice little hotel called La Tour Sainte-Cécile about 200m from the cathedral. We were really lucky and got upgraded from a single room to a suite and the owner (a very nice man called Bertrand) went out of his way to make us feel at home. Read more…