In the Picture

Visiting Willie Fishing by Bootsy Holler

We've all seen those scenes in the movies. It's the one where one of the film's cast will pick up a photograph that shows the main lead with the President, the Fuhrer or some other historical character equally vital to the complicated character back story. Is that you with..!

Sometimes the 'cut n' paste' quality of these mock up images in the movies are laughable, and other times the photograph will look thoroughly convincing. It's an art to put yourself into an old photo and Los Angeles based photographer Bootsy Holler seems to have got it down to a fine art.

Bootsy has added herself to a number of old family photos scenes quite convincingly. Some images may work slightly better than others, but many of the photographs look totally authentic - especially this portrait.

Check out more of her fascinating work HERE

Review: SlideShowPro Director

Editing an album within SlideShowPro Director 

Around twelve months ago, i heard about the content management and publishing application called SlideShowPro Director while reading through a photographer's blog. The post featured a glowing review of the features and abilities of the software. Recently, while updating my website, i decided to buy the application myself. After around six weeks of using the platform, I thought i'd add my opinions about this content management system to this blog. Here is my review.

Login Screen

Galleries. There, I've said it! That little word has caused me no end of aggravation in the past. While most of the plugins, add-ons and 'gallery engines' pledge that they have been designed to make the job of putting together a slideshow an easy task, often they do the exact opposite. Building a gallery should be easy. Straightforward. Simple. A photographer shouldn't have to spend his time fighting with the very system that is supposed to be helping him. When it came to a recent re-design of my main website at the end of last year, i wanted to completely update the gallery system on the website. I remembered SlideShowPro Director and decided, after a look around at what was available, to use that publishing platform on the new site.

Upload Screen

Purchasing is very straightforward and the download process went equally smoothly. The self install is priced at $59, which works out at just under £40 for any Brits reading this. I should mention at this point, that i did pay for my own copy of SlideShowPro Director. No paid or sponsored endorsements here.  I decided to go for the self hosted version of SlideShowPro, but a hosted version at slideshowpro.com is also available. The license for the self install applies to one domain name only and the activation key is quickly emailed to you on confirmation of purchase. If you aren't technically minded or don't like the idea of hosting the platform on your own server, then the SlideShowPro.com hosted version may be the route to go. Prices are very reasonable at $49.00 per year, $80 for two years or just $29.00 for six months.

Snapshot Screen

Installation was simple. If you can install WordPress or Drupal onto a server, then you will find have no problem installing SlideShowPro Director. I was surprised that the download file was a very small 6kb in size. A very useful and intuitive install wizard guides you through the install process, making sure every server setting is correct. As soon as MySQL databases are set up, username and password selected,  the small installation file will install the SlideShowPro Director software direct to your server. The demands on the server were something i was slightly concerned about, but so far the impact on my server host has been minimal - more space has been used and there has been a marginal increase in bandwidth use.  SlideShowPro Director can upload large images with the default (it can be altered) on my installation being set at 8Mb, but to conserve space on the server, I've limited my image file sizes to around 1Mb. You are then ready to start creating your own photo albums and embedding them onto your website.

Albums Overview

To access SlideShowPro Director, the user goes to a login page, enters their username and password - you then enter the management system. After login, the first screen you arrive at is the 'snapshot' page that gives you an overview of recent uploads, recent gallery/album updates and SlideShowPro news. In the top left hand corner is the tap navigation that helps you get around. As well as the snapshot and user area, there is a help section and most important of all, two sections concerned with the uploading and management of images. The one that you will spend the majority of your time in is the albums sections. Here you are offered standard and smart albums. The standard album format is simple enough - place images in an album, move them around via drag n' drop, then embed the code into your website page to get your slideshow. Smart albums offers a more controlled, smarter display option where rules can be applied to image display, the most common in use being the 'recent' and ' past month' galleries displaying recently uploaded material. The system does enable more sophisticated edits to be made so that an image or collection of images can appear and disappear whenever required. The galleries section simple determines which albums are shown together within the embedded media player. This offers the viewer the ability to go from one slideshow to another easily and it's a great way of grouping related work together and navigating through it all.

Embed options Screen

 SlideShowPro Director embeds a Flash version of the slideshow AND a useful HTML5 version for iPhone, iPad and Android visitors to your website. Viewers access the different versions of the player depending on the device they view the website with. Embedding the slideshow is easy enough. After choosing from a range of style options, you then just simple press the 'copy embed code' button, and paste the javascript code to the chosen page. Simple. One thing to be aware of though, is how some website restrict the use of embedded javascript code. For example, self hosted WordPress websites should be OK, but WordPress.com hosted sites don't allow embedded javascript. The best method to find out if Director will work with your current website is to try the free 14 day trial, and test it with your set-up before purchasing a license. SlideShowPro also provide a small file that you download to your server to test server compatibility with the software. Most good server hosts should easily conform to the requirements needed to access SlideShowPro Director. If in doubt, download and use the14 day trial to test all the features.

Slideshow Navigation

After six weeks of use, i've come to really love SlideShowPro Director. It's easy to use, powerful and flexible. I've added galleries in minutes and best of all it's improved the visual dynamics of the website immensely. Images are easier to find and manage, and the viewing experience, especially when using the full screen option, is now excellent. The application has been well thought out to include more functions than you can shake a stick at. The fact that you can also embed video to your website using this package makes Director an ideal presentation solution for any photographers using video too. I haven't tried that function yet, but i intend to at a later date. Customisation of the media player is possible using some of the components and plugins available from the SlideShowPro website. If you want to style your own universal media player to suit the design of your website, the tools are there so that you can achieve that.

In conclusion, I've found SlideShowPro Director to be a delight. Maintaining slideshows is easy and because the application is based online, i can add work, create new presentations, etc from wherever i happen to be - all i need is the laptop and an internet connection. The fact that Director can handle video and has HTML5 support for viewers using mobile devices is just the icing on the cake.

Highly Recommended 5/5

Distant View

Copyright 2012 DigitalGlobe.  Produced by UNITAR/UNOSAT

There have been plenty of galleries featuring images from the Costa Concordia news story, but it's this ghostly satellite image that really stands out.

Maybe it's the unusual angle or the use of black and white, but there is something haunting about this photo. The ship almost looks like a beached animal, awaiting assistant to take it back to sea.

Dakar Rally 2012

Spain's Nani Roma and co-pilot Michel Perin of France drive their Mini Monster during the 10th stage of the fourth South American edition of the Dakar Rally 2012 from Iquique to Arica January 11, 2012. (Jerome Prevost/Reuters/Pool) 

 My interest in certain areas of motorsport have dwindled over the years. I used to be a huge formula one fan back in the 1990's, but then the interesting characters started to disappear from the sport. The business of Formula One, rather than the sport, seems to be more important these days. I imagine that the partial move to SKY sports in 2012 ( BBC show nine races live and SKY sports nine too) will finally mark the start of Formula One's move to pay to view.

About the only motorsport i've remained keen on is rallying. The sport seems to have a great mix of speed, noise and unpredictability. I've photographed rally events and loved every minute of it. Stages can usually be be easily accessed and are often located in places of great beauty. Best of all, as a spectator experience, rallying offers the sights, sound and smell of motorsport at your finger tips.

The Dakar Rally is one event I'd love to photograph. Although named the Dakar Rally, the events themselves take place in South America, moved from Africa and Europe due to concerns about terrorism. Chile, Peru and Argentina, do however, offer some terrific terrain for rallying. Mountains, deserts and rivers challenge the drivers who can be racing in trucks, cars, quadbikes or motorbikes.

Photographing the event is tricky. As well as the usual photo kit, a helicopter is pretty much essential for keeping up with the action. A number of the big photoblogs have put together great collections of images from this year's Dakar Rally, including InFocus, The Big Picture and The Frame.

Photojournalism Links

If you love photojournalism and you need to find the best links on the web, then a blog you should definitely take a look at is Photojournalism Links, edited by photographer Mikko Takkunen.

Mikko describes Photojournalism Links as 'a website dedicated to sharing all things good and interesting in photojournalism, documentary photography, and beyond. Updated once a week.' 

It's certainly is a website not to be missed if photojournalism is your thing. It's a must follow blog!

My main website was linked on the site back in October. A big thank you for that Mikko :)

4,748 Self-Portraits and Counting

I hate photographing myself. For some reason, those George Clooney handsome good looks I have, don't seem to make it onto any of my self portraits. I blame the photographer.

Jeff Harris, however, has photographed himself 4,748 times (up to December 31st). Instead of using the same old setting, Jeff has got out and about, resulting in a broad and fascinating collection of self portrait photographs.

If you do visit Jeff's website, do check out the journal section where people write about a day from their life with an image from Jeff's archive from that day -the full extent of the human experience can be found there.

There are quite a few images that catch the eye - one photograph I spotted from Jeff's collection appears to have been taken by Gene Simmons from the rock band KISS.... at least that's who it looks like.

Visit jeffharris.org to see the project in its entirety.

Following on...

...from the last blog post, I've just spent the last thirty minutes going through the RSS feeds i subscribe to, deleting those feeds that are sadly no longer updating. The final tally came to ten dead RSS feeds, some of which hadn't updated since earlier in the year. Others were close to deletion, only to be saved at the last minute when i realised that the feed address had changed, often with no warning to subscribers.

On a more positive note, a blog I've started following just recently is Alec Soth's 'Little Brown Mushroom that features excellent posts dealing with all sorts of photography questions and topics. The post that instantly caught my attention asked the question 'at what age do photographers do their most influential work?'. The answers via the comments are a great read - even Martin Parr has left an answer.

The Fallen

© Images by Mikael Kennedy/Passport to Trepass

Reading through Blake Andrews' In Memoriam: Photoblogs 2011' makes sobering reading. The amount of great photoblogs who have shut up shop this year is rather disconcerting.

The one that i miss most from Blake's 2011 closure list is Down and Out, now archived at 'Passport to Trepass'. I came late to the blog but loved Mikael Kennedy's work right from the off. The mix of Polaroid images with a personal and distinctly intimate portraits of the people and places Mikael visited. Projects come to an end and sadly this was just the case with 'Down and Out'.

As for my own blog(s), well they are still active, though i must admit that i haven't posted as much as I'd like during 2011. I'll try to be more active in 2012. I do regard the closure of my blogging efforts as pretty much unthinkable. As one of my clients said  'You have a lot to say Richard' - indeed i do but it goes beyond that. A blog is the perfect platform for communication with few limitations, unlike certain other platforms.

Twitter and Facebook may be great for short snippets and linking - convenient too - but they are often of the moment and accessibility for non Twitter/Facebook users can be tough or even non-existent. The clinical  design and detached feel of Facebook has never engaged me as a user, so why do i still use it? Simply because the posts added there reach a different audience to that of my blog, although i have found it difficult to increase my 'likes' or fans. Maybe i should update more - something to work on in 2012 maybe.

Many photographers appear to move to Facebook because they feel that that is where the big audiences reside. That may be true, at least in some cases, but often it's a closed audience who use Facebook as their main social network. If you aren't a Facebook user, would you visit a Facebook page? I doubt it. You're outside of the Facebook network family with no ability to comment or even show approval.

As a final word we come back to Blake's website, simply called 'B'. Definitely a photography blog to follow in 2012, if you don't already.

Merry Christmas 2011

That's it for another year. How quickly Christmas comes and goes. It hasn't been an extravagant one this year -  no Leica M9 under the tree this year - but it hasn't been too bad.

I did get two rather good photography books - that i bought myself i might add - books that include the superb Chris Killip book Seacoal. Superb human interest photography by a great photographer.

Anyway I hope that you've all had a great Christmas day.

Fifteen Minutes

Exodus from panos pictures on Vimeo.

I've linked to this on Twitter a couple of times this week, but here it is again because it is such a great use of the multimedia format.

A brilliant piece of multimedia by Chris de Bode and Panos Pictures.

Journey on Mars

I love this kinda stuff. A time-lapse video showing the whole 4.8 mile journey made by NASA's Mars Rover Spirit that took an astounding 5 years, 3 months and 27 days to complete. That immense journey  has been condensed into 2 minutes and 30 seconds of footage.

LIFE at 75

LIFE celebrates its 75 anniversary, well at least it kinda does. The history of LIFE is as varied as the content of the magazine itself. LIFE magazine in its purist form lasted from November 1936 to December 1972 - after that, the title lost its way. Only recently has LIFE really returned to a close approximation of its original role as part of  an online venture between Getty Images and TIME/LIFE. Something is still missing though.

A series of poor 'specials' and various misguided comebacks over the years, have done the brand no favours whatsoever. The Life.com website does have its finer moments, but it can veer towards a tabloid fuelled, celebrity dominated content at times - mostly at the expense of its own back catalogue of classic work. A return to a broad mix of stories, like those carried by the original magazine, would be nice.

A number of galleries celebrate the 75 years of LIFE, with one of the best showcasing the best photography that made the magazine's name. The likes of Larry burrows and Margaret Bourke-White (both LIFE photographers) have more than one image featured. The 75 best LIFE photographs can be found HERE

More galleries cover aspects from magazine covers to LIFE photographers looking back at a favourite or iconic photo story they produced. Every edition of LIFE ever produced, a great look back in time, and still a good read, can be viewed via Google Books HERE

Joker in the pack

Is a photography degree worth taking? With the growing costs of studying, it comes as no surprise that people are asking this more and more. I was lucky. I managed to go to university before the grant system disappeared.  I don't think I'd apply for a degree now unless i could prove it was a worthy investment.

A great post on the duckrabbit blog (yes them again!) nicely sums the pros and cons of the photography education system. If you are thinking about photography education, then I'd definitely recommend you read this article. It may help answer your question.

Are photography degrees the joker in the pack?

More Murmurations

More murmurations for you. Amazing. Astounding. Beautiful.

This wonderful little film was found via the duckrabbit blog - a recommended read.

Nine Goats

It's amazing how far a goat will go to get a meal. At first glance i thought it was a manipulated image, which maybe says a lot about how cynical I'm getting when viewing new images. A few years ago i would have looked at this photograph with no doubt in my mind that it was genuine.

This photo was just a number of animal photographs featured in a superb gallery put together by the Telegraph website. The first image in the collection of 38 photographs captures a wonderful moment. That gallery can be found HERE

The second link from this week's photography are also from the animal world, but in a more abstract sense. The magical shape-shifting patterns (called murmurations) made by thousands of starlings in the skies above Gretna in Scotland, have been photographed by Owen Humphreys.

No one knows why the aerial display by thousands of birds takes place. The remarkable images can be found HERE

A daily round-up of the best photography news and links can be found HERE

All about Eve

Marilyn Monroe, 1955 |  Photograph by Eve Arnold

This isn't going to be backed up with any scientific proof, but i did make a rather interesting observation when i was at an exhibition on Friday . The exhibition in question was 'The Photographers' at Nunnington Hall, a rather grand little country Manor not far from where i live.

The observation wasn't anything to do with the excellent exhibition itself but rather the collection of exhibition catalogues on sale on a table nearby. Nunnington Hall has exhibited photography for a number of years and the work displayed has often been by one or a number of photography's top name talents.

On the table next to the exhibition spaces were around 10 or 12 different high quality exhibition catalogues from previous shows dating back a number of years.  All were available to buy, however, some appeared to be far more popular than others. The top seller was obvious - Steve McCurry - just one, slightly over handled catalogue left. The other photographers seemed to have faired pretty well too with well over half of the catalogues gone for Bruce Davidson, Lord Snowdon, Bailey and a multitude of others.

Who wasn't popular? Well this surprised me - by a landslide it was Eve Arnold. The wonderfully talented Eve Arnold! Poor Eve had a full compliment of catalogues piled high. Now this observation in popularity is based purely on what i saw on the table at that time yesterday afternoon. Maybe Eve's catalogue had sold out the day before and the staff had added a new stack of Arnold catalogues from the stock room.

On the other hand, did that that table reflect that the exhibition viewing public are more receptive to Steve McCurry's colourful and exotic photography? Maybe it is no coincidence that the top selling catalogue on that table featured colour images - the others all contained black and white imagery.

Maybe the general viewing public just prefer the bright colour of McCurry's India to the monochrome tones of an Eve Arnold portrait of Marilyn Monroe. I don't know. I do know that I'll be back in a week or two for another exhibition and I'm going to take another look at that table.

iPad Edition

My photography book Sea, Sky, Sand and Street, featuring over 70 photographs shot in locations around the fabulous English county of Norfolk this summer, is now available for the iPad and iPhone for just £3.49

To grab a copy go to http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2432334

Data Based

"These pictures show several sides of global human activities," said 34-year-old Felix, from Montreal, Canada. "We see everything from paved and unpaved roads, light pollution, railways, electricity transmission lines. All the way to submarine cables, pipelines, shipping lanes and air traffic. 


The representations are not to scale, however, as electrical wires could not be seen from space. But it shows the extent of our civilisation, the patterns of our global sprawl, how human-influenced our planet now is."

The images are made up from real data collected by Felix Pharand-Deschenes from various US government agencies. Although not to scale, the resulting photo-illustrations are impressive visualisation of how human activity has influenced the Earth.

Take a look at a fascinating collection of Felix Pharand-Deschenes's images HERE

Suspicious Photo?

Suspicious photo? Potential Terrorist? Of course not.

When does a family photo stop being a family photo? The answer is when it turns into the image that fuels a PR disaster. Yes, yet again there has been a case of photographer equals enemy of the state, this time at a Glasgow shopping centre. Yet again the terrorism laws have been cited and abused in the name of privacy.

The crime in question was for a dad to photograph, using his mobile phone, his daughter enjoying her ice cream. Staff instantly reported this activity as suspicious. They called security, who called the police which finally led to one idiotic police officer threatening to delete the Dad's family photo under the misguided believe he could do so under terrorism legislation - you actually need a court order to do that in the UK. The photograph had already been posted on Facebook so it was too late anyway.

A Facebook campaign combined with extensive coverage on Twitter and the news websites turned a ice cream photo into a major pr disaster for the Braehead Shopping centre. There's been so much criticism aimed at Braehead that Capital Shopping Centres, who own the Braehead centre, have even decided to change their policy on photography within the 11 shopping complexes they own around the UK. If they had acted in a more thoughtful  and subtle way in the first place, all of the furore that ensued could have been avoided. Yet again it seems to be poor training and communication compounded by ill-informed security and police who abuse laws set up to protect the public. It needs sorting out!

The questions that have to be asked are why do public places impose such stupid rules in the first place? Why is it OK now to take photographs in the Braehead shopping centre when it wasn't before? A public place where families and friends meet up and they expect no one to take photographs during their visit? It seems a ridiculous thing to ask in an age where most people carry a mobile phone capable of taking images or video.

Privacy is an important issue for us all, but more and more it seems the rules are bent, abused or applied in situations that just make a mockery of the law. Is a shopping mall a private place? I would say not. What is even more ironic is the fact that the Braehead Shopping centre is probably bristling with CCTV cameras (like most of the UK) watching the shoppers for 'security' purposes. Where is the privacy in that?

SoFoBoMo Project Closes

Yep... it's true. The Solo Photo Book Month project will disappear at the end of this year. That was the sad news tweeted today by the SoFoBoMo team. After four great years the project staff have decided to wind down the project. They released the following statement

'Solo Photo Book Month has been running for four years. And what a fantastic four years they have been. All good things, however, come to an end. And this is the end for SoFoBoMo. The small group of us who organise the annual event have looked long and hard at the future and have, reluctantly, decided that without proper (i.e. expensive) web development and without proper (i.e. expensive) promotion we cannot go on. We believe that participants over the years have, well, grown a little.

The experience of proving that you *can* (can try, can finish, can see your book, can hold your book) has been energising. People have written to us to tell us that. We've felt it ourselves. We would like to give our grateful thanks to everybody who has volunteered, everybody who has donated, and everybody who has participated. The website will stay online until the end of 2011 and we encourage everybody to explore the range of books available. Goodbye. The SoFoBoMo team.'

Of the four years that the Solo Photo Book Month project took place, I only missed taking part the first year, 2008, due to discovering the project too late to take part. I liked what i saw. SoFoBoMo was well organised, the website informative and there was a relaxed, friendly attitude towards participants in the project. Then there was also the challenge of making a photography book. I learned a lot.

I will miss the Solo Photo Book Month Project.

WWII in Photographs

The commander of a Cossack unit in the Kharkov region, Ukraine, on June 21, 1942 

If, like me, you are interested in photography from World War II, then I'm sure you'll absolutely love the WWII retrospective that the Atlantic photography blog InFocus is currently running.

Released every Sunday until the end of October, this 20 part retrospective look at the world during World War II features some fantastic work covering all aspects of the war from the home front through to the war in Russia and the Pacific.

This fantastic galleries, many containing over 40 images and including action photos and portraits like the superb Cossack commander photograph seen above, really do capture the human experiences of the conflict on all fronts and bring the history of World War II to life.

To visit the excellent InFocus WWII galleries go to http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/ww2.html

7300 Days

Twenty years ago, i walked into an art college and commenced my photographic education. For six years, via three art colleges,  i went through the best and worst of an education system designed to 'encourage' creative thought. I actually found that by the end of it all, when i came to leave education, it had had the reverse effect. My love of photography was eroded over 18 months. That was partly due to me, but my final photography course also played a part too.

I started out studying a mixture of TV, film and photography and, in the long run, it seems to have been the course that is the most relevant to working as a photographer in this growing multimedia era. The equipment i used back then would be considered antiques now - the only digital thing in the edit suite was the CD player - but the techniques for editing video, recording audio and taking photographs haven't changed - even if the technology has improved considerably.

The question i often ask myself is; What kind of photographer would I have been without those six years of study? Did it really make much of a difference? I think i did... but what's kinda eluding me are the details of how and why.

Book Making: Blurb

Four years ago, I came across a photography blog post that talked about the start of a new online photography project. That project was the Solo Photo Book Month where participants have to shoot, edit and design a photography book featuring 35+ images in just 31 days. Sadly I was too late to take part in the project's launch year but I decided then and there that i would take part the following year - I've done so ever since. I think what appealed to me the most was the flexibility and laid back approach to making a photobook. You make it as challenging as you want it to be. The project was also achievable - unlike other projects that make great demands on the participant.

 This year I wanted to produce an actual photography book. The internet has opened up a whole new range of possibilities for producing printed books at a price not that much higher than a book of a shop shelf. After a look around i decided to go with Blurb.com. I liked the range of books and the free book designing software called BookSmart makes the construction of a book far easier and quicker. This post is really a review but just my experiences of using the Blurb service. Before this I'd had a little experience making books the old fashioned way at college. This was all pre-digital glorified 'build your own book' type of photobook. The new self published books are more in line with what a professionally printed book should look like. The PDF version of the book Sand, Sky, Sea and Street, I submitted to SoFoBoMo wouldn't transfer easily to the blurb book templates so I decided to start from scratch and design a new book. It was frustrating but I'm glad it went that way now. The results were so much better and I could re-evaluate the book design and the photographs too.

The design itself came together quickly aided by the easy to use BookSmart software. By using Blurb's own software you also get the added benefit of being able to check on how your book looks with the preview option. Using BookSmart speeded the design process up no end and I'd certainly recommend using it. There are plenty of choices available for the book designer when using the software. I decided to go with a small 7x7 inches (18x18cm) book mainly because to suit the square format of the photography i was placing on the pages The finished book was completed in four days with the slightly altered title of Sea, Sky, Sand and Street. The 44Mb file uploaded to the Blurb website in around 20 minutes. We were ready for publishing.

It should be noted that you have to buy a published edition of your own book within 15 days or the design is taken off the website. No doubt that is to stop large scale book designing and to conserve Blurb's server space. Once you buy a copy of your book it will remain on your Blurb bookstore page for others to buy. I ordered a hard cover edition with premium matt paper. Delivery took around ten days. The one issue that did concern me was the accuracy of the publishing. It's great having a book design on screen that looks fabulous but it needs to go through the publishing process. Probably the biggest worry is the trimming and construction of the book. Photographs need space on the page so that they are not cropped or obscured when the pages are printed and the book is put together. The BookSmart software gives guidance but an element of care is still needed. Just before I sent the book off for printing I reduced the image size on the pages by 5%. It doesn't sound that much but it gave that extra bit of space for the assembly of the book. The printed version came out very nicely with only a very small difference (on the edges of the cover design) between the BookSmart designed version and the published hardback copy I ordered. I would say that overall the design remained 97% intact.

The print quality is superb on my edition. Images have fantastic deep black tones and crisp whites. Text was sharp and well defined. My only complaint would be that the images have a greenish/yellowish tone that isn't there in the original images. This doesn't distract from the book quality and it may just be a printing issue with the very dark black photograph tones. Some of the warmth of the original photographs has been lost though which is a shame. If you are particularly fussy about print tones this may be something to take into consideration. I will be ordering more copies of Sea, Sky, Sand and Street in future and it will be interesting to see if the green/yellow tone are there in the new copies. It's a small issue but one that can hopefully be sorted out over time so that the image tones are nearer the originals.

In conclusion, I can say that my first published book went really well. If I had to give a mark it would get an eight out of ten. The book is well made and the print quality is excellent. I have a number of photography books in my collection that aren't as well printed as this Blurb book. The service would have have got a nine or a ten if the image tones had been nearer the original photographs. I would like to say that what you design and see on the screen is what you get, but sadly it isn't quite as straightforward as that - at least not for me so far. Don't be put off by that though. If you want to produce a photography book, the Blurb service delivers great results.

Error 29

This last couple of weeks has been all about fixing things - especially this last week where everything seemed to go wrong. During the middle of the week the website server was hacked and although the site wasn't damaged, it did go offline for around 36 hours. Fortunately the web host technical support guys did a great job of rebooting everything and getting the site back onto the web.

My iPhone problem was a different matter. Around two weeks ago i sent it to get repaired at i-phone-repairs.co.uk. The connector was damaged so i couldn't update the phone software and i decided to have a new battery put in too. I sent the phone off on the Monday and got it back on the Saturday. Not bad i thought. How very wrong i was.

The first thing i wanted to do was get the new Apple iPhone operating system update done. It started off fine and then came up with an error message. After numerous attempts at this with the same error message, i decided to then do a full restore and update. Start from scratch. An error number 29 message came up. By this point i was worried.

After some researching online i discovered a number of people mentioned the battery as being the likely problem. 99.99% of the time it's the battery claimed one forum post. The problem could be caused by a non genuine, cheap or incompatible battery being placed in the phone. So i decided to e-mail i-phone-repairs.co.uk to see what they said. I got this email back.

Dear Mr Richard Flint,
Thank you for contacting us regarding your order, I have looked in to this for you and I can see that the reason you are having these faults are due to the newer versions of software, which are actually intended for the iPhone 4. I am afraid there is nothing we would be able to do to help you on this occasion.

Kind regards,
Vikki

Customer Service Advisor

Hmm not even a trace of 'we'd like to help' there. I sent a second e-mail detailing the issue better and got this email reply from i-phone-repairs.co.uk . This email has been pasted into the post complete with the spelling mistakes from the original email.

Dera Mr Flint,

Thank you for getting back to us with this, I have spoken to one of our supervisors and they have advised that due to the software that has een upgraded on your device there is nothing that we can do, we would like to send our apologies for this and if teher was something that we can do we would however we can not. If you have any furthur questions or queries please do not hesitate to ask.

Kind Regards

Sarah
Customer Service Advisor

Do you get the impression that the reply was rather rushed? It has we don't care! written all over it. From that point on i realised that I had to fix it. I ordered a genuine battery and some tools and did it myself. The result was the iPhone started first time. It WAS the battery causing the fault. On closer inspection it turned out that i-phone-repairs.co.uk had placed into my iPhone 3GS, a cheap non-genuine iPhone 3G battery with the number APN:616-0366 - whereas a 3GS needs a battery with the number APN:616-433 or 435 to avoid unknown Error 29 messages with IOS4.

This is an issue that a repair company should have known about. They probably did but didn't care once they got my money. If they don't know about battery compatibility then that is rather worrying. OK, they repaired the connector socket fine - so far. I'll give them that, but to blatantly not give a toss about after care (or my iPhone), especially when the customer has a problem, is pretty disgusting. People care about their phones and need to trust that they are getting a phone repaired correctly. It's a strange business model to have an iPhone sent for repair by the customer, only to be returned to them with another fault caused by that very business using the wrong components.

Add to that the fact that the cheap 3G battery they put in could have potentially damaged my phone (it got very warm, would not charge properly and caused system restarts every few minutes) i find it hard to recommend this company to anyone. Not even an enemy!

Cosmic Camera

Photography in space has a certain appeal. None of that dirty Earth atmosphere to get in the way of the light and you certainly won't get any interruptions from passing strangers. These days we take the photographs taken in space for granted but back in the early sixties the technology had to be developed to achieve photography in space.

This great little film documents how the Lunar Orbiter Camera started and advanced that process. The technology is remarkable. The orbiter features a 70mm dual lenses film camera, processing lab, analogue scanner and transmitter all in one. The film used was Bi-Mat which was similar to Polaroid.

The camera was designed to map the moon's surface to gain useful information for the moon mission that would follow some three years later. The camera did manage to photograph the Earth too - the first photograph to show the whole of the Earth floating in space.