Apparently lots of people are having problems taking photos in public in the UK, which gets me a little scared (not to mention annoyed, after shelling out for a new camera last month). Most of the problems I’ve heard of recently seem to involve photographing people, which is not something I tend to do very much, but it’s so easy to make people think you’re taking their photo in crowded urban spots. Especially when you shoot with wide-view lenses and the direction you’re pointing your camera could be straight in someone’s face without you really noticing.

What really bothers me is that there are pseudo-police (PCSOs) walking the streets armed with zero knowledge of the laws under which they are questioning people and therefore just going with their gut reaction. One hopes the real police are slightly more clued-in than this, but I’m not holding my breath.

Random work from 2006, back when I was wandering Oxford photographing it for a living.

Finally getting my new photo organising app (Shoebox) into shape so I can start to make some sense of the piles and piles of pictures that have built up since I left uni and entered the real world. Which reminds me – if you’re a web geek of some description you may be interested in one other thing that’s been keeping me busy the last few months. It’s called Ojay and it makes writing JavaScript UI code really sweet.

From a trip to Tenerife last year. You do wonder why people choose to live the places they do.

I know, tawdry title, but still: Police defend anti-terror photo campaign. Dear the government and security services of the United Kingdom: please stop criminalising your citizens. You and I know that the poster doesn’t technically mark photography as a crime, but come on – you know what people are like. Londoners (if the press is to be believed) are on edge enough as it is without made to feel edgy about people like me with our little light-collecting boxes. Remember when anyone on the Tube with a backpack was a terrorist? People aren’t being encouraged to be vigilant, they’re being placed in a constant state of fear where they suspect everyone around them. It’s not healthy, and nobody’s going to stop me wandering around this city with my new toy.

Speaking of new toys: got a Nikon D80 (to replace the D70) a couple weeks ago. Also, I’m working on some home-spun software to organise my photos now that I seem to have tens of thousands of them. Yes, there is already software for doing this, but I need something I can (and am allowed to) read and modify the source code of. My digital archive needs to last decades and it wont do that while other people are in charge of my software.

Outside the Mayor’s offices, London.

A happy 2008 one and all. Last year involved a good deal of change – moving in with Jen, moving to London, switching jobs… This year looks set to involve another house move, though not sure yet. I’ve got a bunch of photos I took around the time we moved in that I’ve been meaning to put up for a while. Truth be told, my other major hobby (programming and building websites) has taken over a little in the past year, what with said activities now being what pays my rent. Maybe I’ll get away from the computer a little more when the days get longer.

One of Manila’s more affluent areas.