Back in 1979 I had the good luck to photograph a series of buildings for the ‘Thirties’ exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. The photos were used in the exhibition in a series of slide programmes with 2m square screens and featured several landmark buildings from the 1930s. One of my favourites was St Olaf House, the head office of Hay’s Wharf, situated on the Thames between London and Tower Bridges. St Olaf House was designed by architect Harry Goodhart-Rendel, right down to the details such as the door handles, clocks and carpets. One thing he didn’t design were the bas relief sculptures on the river frontage for which he commissioned his friend Frank Dobson.

I’ve spent this afternoon scanning some of the original photos which were shot on 120 Ektachrome film on a Hasselblad.

When I get time I’ll scan some photos of the other buildings, which included Highpoint 1, the Penguin Pool at London Zoo and Dudley Zoo (Berthold Lubetkin) and some of the stations on the 30s extension to the Piccadilly line (Charles Holden).

I’ve recently purchased a Fuji FinePix F600EXR so that I have a camera that I can keep in my pocket all the time. On my list of ‘must haves’ was the ability to shoot RAW which most pocket cameras don’t have, and those that do tend to be in the £300+ price bracket. When it was first introduced in August last year its list price was about £320 (street price £280) but in January this year a new model (F770) came out and the F600 can now be got for about £160 – half the original list price. It’s probably not quite as good as some of the other cameras in its class (notably the Panasonic LX5) but it has some features that I’ve been very impressed with, notably the ability to shoot panoramas. When compared with the panoramas that I shoot with my Nikon D300 they’re obviously inferior, but considering that they’re stitched in a couple of seconds in the camera, I’m really quite impressed. This, coupled with a 15x optical zoom (24-360mm equivalent), macro focus down to 5cm and a whole string of features I’ll probably never use, has made me very happy.

Southwark Cathedral have just added a tour of three 360° panoramas that I produced to their website. The tour shows views of the nave, altar and crossing, and choir. The cathedral dates back to Norman times when it was known as St Mary Overy (over the water) although it only received cathedral status in 1905. Much of the current building dates to between 1220 and 1420 when it was rebuilt following a fire. In 1536 following the Dissolution of the Monasteries the church was rededicated to St Saviour. The tower and choir were restored in the early 1800s and the nave was totally rebuilt in 1839 in Gothic style. Further extensive building work was carried out in 2000 to provide conference and educational facilities.

I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist! (PHNAT), the campaign group set up to fight unnecessary and draconian restrictions against individuals taking photographs in public spaces, organised a flashmob outside London’s City Hall today. Not a lot of people turned up (maybe between 70 and 100) but a letter was handed in to Boris Johnson.

What many people don’t know is that the land along the embankment between Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast is privately managed, and the company that runs it has draconian restrictions on what can and can’t take place there. This is also true of many other places in London – Canary Wharf and Broadgate have similar restrictions. Try taking photographs with a professional looking SLR and see how long it is before you get stopped by one of their security guards. You score extra points if they start talking about ‘the terrorist threat’.

There are a few more photos of the event at Flickr.

One of my oldest friend’s son, Jethro Jackson, has just opened a studio/gallery at Porthilly, near Rock, on the North Cornwall Coast. Jethro and his father, Paul Jackson are both potters and more recently Jethro has started painting beautiful seascapes. The gallery is also showing the work of other potters including Chris Prindl and Eddie Curtis, sculpture and jewellery – and some of my photographs! This is the first time in nearly 20 years that any of my photos have been seen in public. Most of the photos are of Cornwall, either the North Coast or Bodmin Moor.

You can see some of the images in my Cornwall collections at Flickr and animated versions of the panoramas here.

The gallery is very light and airy and you can see Jethro at work in his studio at the rear.

About 100 metres down the road is the beautiful little church of St Michael which stands right on the coast at Porthilly Cove with views of Padstow across the Camel Estuary. It’s a fantastic spot and well worth a visit if you’re in Cornwall this summer.

I’ve taken the opportunity of a couple of quiet days to update some of the older panoramas on my website. I’ve used the latest beta version of Pano2VR and decided to only go with Flash panoramas and ditch the Java and Quicktime versions completely. All of the updates used a much higher resolution image and will only be compatible with Flash 9 and upwards – but as the uptake of Flash 9 and now version 10 seems to be fairly universal I don’t think this will be much of a problem.

ReedDesign has just completed a series of 360° panoramas for Mill Hill and Belmont Schools. The panoramas include interiors of the Chapel, Favell Building and 6th Form Common Room as well as some exterior views of the grounds.

The panoramas were shot on a Nikon D300 with a 10.5mm fisheye lens and a KingPano panoramic head. They were stitched using PTGui and converted into Flash panoramas using Pano2VR.