Last night I was waiting on London Bridge station to meet a friend, while waiting I took a couple of photos of the commuters, photo below is one of the nicest for the night.
London attracts weirdos in a big way. I try and hang around the tourist spots a few times a month since there are often very entertaining things happening. Usually this is in the form of Street Performers or other people doing things for money.
For many months now I kept bumping into one specific guy that always hang around Piccadilly and areas but never had a camera with me to capture him. Tonight I did and finally got some shots of him. He started off standing with a board with the words “Odd Erection” printed on it in many different languages, with a weird picture. Eventually he started wearing a tshirt with the same on. Thesedays you will often find him talking to tourists who obviously cannot help asking what the story is. I too asked him what is going on and he told me he just has nothing better to do, other people claim he told them he is a art student. Regardless, he has been a constant London peculiarity now for 8 or so months.
Here he is with his old card board, he also got a mention here and on some other places.
Click these thumbnails for my shots of him tonight
I found via boingboing a link to this site with photos of a deserted island (click on ‘thumbnail’ for the actual photos) off the coast of Japan, this reminded me of the town near Chernobyl that has been deserted, I have been interested in visiting that for years. There are tour groups that will take you to it now, I am very seriously considering going in the summer.
Off the westernmost coast of Japan, is an island called “Gunkanjima” that is hardly known even to the Japanese. Long ago, the island was nothing more than a small reef. Then in 1810, the chance discovery of coal drastically changed the fate of this reef. As reclamation began, people came to live here, and through coal mining the reef started to expand continuously. Befor long, the reef had grown into an artificial island of one kilometer (three quarters of a mile) in perimeter, with a population of 5300. Looming above the ocean, it appeared a concrete labyrinth of many-storied apartment houses and mining structures built closely together.
Eventually, the mines faced an end, and in 1974 the world’s once most densely populated island become totally deserted. The island, after all its inhabitants departed leaving behind their belongings, became an empty shell of a city where all its peopl disappeared overnight, as if by some mysterious act of God.
Ten years later, I returned to the island, equipped with food and drinking water. The island was devastated, with the smell of people gone. Inside the buildings, however, evidence of people’s lives remained strongly. The strange atmosphere led me to wonder if island had remained in sleep ever since all its inhabitants left.
Via PhotographyBLOG I found a nice workflow and action for creation black and white images from color without messing with the original file. The workflow is very flexible and seems to give good results that can be tailored to your needs.
After much waiting and conspiracy theorizing on forums DP Review has finally released their full review of the Nikon D70. For many potential buyers this is what decision making is all about, they simply will not buy anything before dpreview gives it the thumbs up.
This review is seen is important especially in this case where the camera has pronounced moire under some conditions and colour casting issues under extreme conditions, the community has been strongly devided between those with a D70 who recognises the quality of the camera and the trade offs in obtaining the image quality and those without the D70 who have been trolling and over emphasising problems. The Canon community is also hugely up in arms due to his slight favouring of the D70 over the Digital Rebel and 10D. I am glad it was not my duty to make such a decision.
Today much of that has been answered in the review and is well worth a read for any prospective buyer.
Nikon have achieved three major improvements with the D70 (compared to the competition / the D100): (1) They have improved the performance of the camera, with its instant on availability, very fast shutter release, superb continuous shooting and image processing speed and smart use of its buffer. (2) They have maintained build quality while still delivering a smaller and lighter camera, the D70 doesn’t feel much less well built than the D100 but is lighter, it certainly feels much more like $1000 worth of camera than the EOS 300D could. (3) They have improved image sharpness and detail, while we could niggle about moire the compromise between artifacts and sharpness is worth it, in many instances the D70 delivering more detail than our previous benchmark, the EOS 300D / EOS 10D CMOS sensor.
There’s not much more for me to add other than I am very pleased to see Nikon stepping up with a quality camera which doesn’t compromise on build quality, feature set or image quality and yet offers superb value for money. There’s no risk involved in the D70’s slightly higher price compared to the EOS 300D (Digital Rebel), it’s absolutely worth it.
Today I finally received my Nikon D70. There is an absolute frenzy in London as anyone who has any stock have been flooded with calls about it.
I had one booked at a shop who was wanting ยฃ950 inc for it, but then another got stock before the first shop did. They were selling it for ยฃ869 and had 9, 8 was on pre-order so I got the last one.
Now that they are also out of stock they put the price up to ยฃ999 so that’s a nice big bit of inflation there ๐
