Fun! It case you were in any doubt what it

This is an abridged view of the “Funland” sign. Any resemblance to Alcatraz is purely coincidental.

Better than the Real Elvis! Let he without irony cast the first stone.

This made me laugh quite lot. Tongue in cheek or not, you really have to laugh at the suggestion that some dodgy guy with dyed hair is better than the real Elvis. I think the appropriate phrase is “Fair play to the lad.”

Splendid Juxtaposition

Do you get the feeling that the proprietors of the establishments above and below didn’t discuss how the arrange their signs? Really? Um. Words fail me.

I always thought he was more of sandals guy...

Get all your religion and footwear needs met in a single building, what’s not to like?

As Seen on BBC TV

There is so much to admire here. Firstly, a damn good price for what I can only imagine is a great chip bitty. After all, it was featured on the BBC in March 2010. And, if you can say anything about the BBC is that they know a good chip butty when they see one. Don’t know what show it featured on. Masterchef maybe? “Oh, mate, that chip butty is like a cuddle”

Mixed Messages

Tattoos anyone? Candy Floss? Slush? Vegas this is not.

Coral Island

Ooh, an arty one. Coral Island looks more like PuggyLand to me.

Central Pier Sign

You can see in some of the signs when effort has been taken.

Madame Tussauds - Alan Carr

So, who is the headline waxwork at the Blackpool Madame Tussauds? Mohammed Ali? Gandhi? Richard Feynman? Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d’Estaing? No. Alan Carr. Now, I’ve nothing against Alan Carr. But… well…

Alien Base

“The World’s Only” Alien Base, why is that in quotes? Who cares when you have a walk through audio visual extravaganza of knowledge and wisdom. I imagine it is much like the Natural History Museum. I’m kinda sad I didn’t go in now. This is like a Giles cartoon, can you see the pigeon?

Tower Ballroom Dancers

There was a dance going on in the Tower Ballroom. This couple were great, I’m no great expert on ballroom dancing but they seemed to be very proficient.

Looking up and Down

On the Promenade outside the tower there is a massive Comedy Carpet on the ground. It’s a very cool thing, lots of quotes and lines from hundreds of comedians old and new. I liked this shot because you can see people looking down at the words and others looking up at the Tower.

Comedy Carpet

A wider shot of the Comedy Carpet, you can read more about it here.

Young and Old

I liked this one as it had the contrast of the young couple walking away arm in arm and the older couple coming towards the camera.

In Days Gone By

Don’t think he necessarily as sad as he looks here but catching him looking down makes him look reflective.

Crossing the Road

Shot randomly out the door of the Tower.

I may write another post of exactly what I thought of Blackpool but I won’t do that here, will leave this post for the photos.

***EDIT***

As there are quite a few people ending up here looking for details relating to Billy walking off stage in Blackpool, yes, I was there and here are my brief thoughts. He played for 1 hour and 45 minutes and he was great. Yes, some idiots shouted some nonsense and others shouted them down. From the stage I guess it all maybe sounded bad. Anyway, Billy did leave promptly and, if anything, I was more sad for him that I was for me. He shouldn’t have to put up with that. And, as far as old material etc. I’d only definitely heard one joke before ( the last one he told ) and it was still funny. Why? Because Billy is funny. I could listen to him the dullest story and he’d probably find it a way to be amusing. After all, it’s a performance, and he’s a performer. You go see a band play live and virtually insist they play things you’ve heard before. Let’s be honest, if Billy had done The Crucifixion or The Jobbie Wheecha ( both of which I know by heart almost ) I would have been the happiest person there. Such is the media and the idiocy of some that these things become ridiculously big issues. They’re not. I’m just happy to say that finally saw Billy live. Quite why he still bothers, I have no idea but I’m glad he does. Thanks Billy.

***END EDIT***

We also got very lucky with a beautifully sunny, crisp Saturday during which we had a good walk with the camera. This is the first in a set of 3 blog posts. I’ll say that this is the pretty one, you’ll see what I mean in due course.

Blackpool Tower

Much like the Forth Rail Bridge, it takes seven years to paint the Blackpool Tower. So it’ll be a little while before you can take a picture without it being covered in scaffold.

Blackpool Tower and Pleasure Beach

In the distance you can see the big roller coaster of the pleasure beach, this was taken from the North Pier.

Blackpool North Pier

A view down the North Pier. It may be very cold in January but it does mean you don’t have so many people ghosting up your HDR!

Blackpool North Pier looking landward

Same pier looking back towards the land.  You can see tram tracks, I don’t think the trams still come down the pier.

Tower Ballroom Detail

The Tower Ballroom is really very splendid inside, hard to capture much of the detail without a tripod, not the brightest place.

Blackpool North Pier Detail

Full of Eastern Promise, a detail of one of the ornate roofs of the buildings on the North Pier. You can see that there had been an attempt at splendour in the past. Very much faded now.

North Pier Fisherman

The North Pier was mainly populated with people fishing. Didn’t see them catching much.

Blackpool Promenade Colonnade

Underneath the Blackpool Promenade there are these rather lovely colonnades.

Helicopter and Wheel

This helicopter buzzed us all morning. It appeared to be doing some filming and it would quite often hover above things.

Looking South from Blackpool Tower

The view looking south from the top of Blackpool Tower looking down towards the big roller coaster.

Blackpool Sunset

This was taken from the hotel window with the Gorillapod. Not bad to have a sea view facing West on a night like that.

After the Sunset

Last shot of the day after the sun went down. Colours were still great.

With thanks to all the people, animals and things that have been so patient with me as I’ve fumble with a camera before them.

January

Edinburgh High Street from Edinburgh Castle Esplanade

Had a very cold walk round one January evening and took lots of pictures. This one made it into the weekly selection on the BBC website. The building on the left is the Camera Obscura. One of our more regular destinations this year.

February

Flare - Dark Edinburgh

This was a photo I took for one of my other sites Dark Edinburgh. Like most of my photography, that’s been a little slow this year too. Will stick at it as best I can.

March

Serge the Peugeot 205 CTi in HDR

While out on the hunt for Dark Edinburgh, I turned the camera on my wee Peugeot 205 CTi on top of Ocean Terminal and captured it in all it’s HDR glory.

April

Winking Snowy Owl at Five Sisters Zoo

This cheeky little fella is at The Five Sisters Zoo in West Lothian. You can see a selection of photos from an earlier trip there here.

Edinburgh High Street Tilt Shift

Hard to resist a tilt shift sometimes. This is looking down the High Street in Edinburgh from the aforementioned Camera Obscura.

May

Three Colours Pepper

I don’t do much stock stuff these days but driven on my the daily Blipfoto urge I do sometimes assault the food in the house.

June

Hands Up If You're A Sun Bear

All the way to June before an Edinburgh Zoo photo. I did go to the zoo quite a bit this year but I’m more after the elusive animals I’ve still to photograph. Damn you Wolverine!

July

Red Panda at Rotterdam Zoo

I did take a lot of photos on my trip to Rotterdam Zoo in July. You can see more of the photos from that day here.

Auschwitz

Also in July, I visited Auschwitz. You can read about that experience here.

August

Budapest At Night

We visited Auschwitz en route to Budapest. A very beautiful city. You can see more pictures of Budapest at Night here.

September

Distant Light - Dark Edinburgh

Another photo I took for Dark Edinburgh. Very lazily, about 50 yards from my house.

October

Eagle Owl

I think 500px have made this the photography year of the owl, so, in a bandwagonesque style, my second owl. This time one from the Loch Lomond Bird of Prey Centre.

November

Dark Edinburgh - Lava

Another Dark Edinburgh picture and a bit of a lucky one, the lights of the bus that passed lit up the road perfectly.

Edinburgh at Night

Another from the Dark Edinburgh cutting room floor.

December

Specially Commissioned For Facebook

As the days darken, so does the mood, although with teenagers that is perhaps a whole year thing.

Light Painting

And finally some light painting courtesy of my daughter.

Hopefully I can take more photos next year but, whatever happens, hope you all have a very pleasant 2012.

I think that off these images, the Crocodile one will ultimately win given how relatively new it is and how well it has done already. As ever, textures are very popular.

Number 10

Cyclists on Pentland Hills - 204 downloads

Number 9

Raccoon In Five Sister's Zoo - 207 Downloads

Number 8

Above The Clouds - 207 Downloads

Number 7

Yellow Rapeseed And Sky - 225 Downloads

Number 6

Wet Grass - 244 Downloads

Number 5

Crocodile Skin - 345 Downloads

Number 4

Sitting Together on Hampstead Heath - 370 Downloads

Number 3

Walking on The Pentland Hills - 463 Downloads

Number 2

Pink Lady Apples - 547 Downloads

Number 1

Two Strawberries - 899 Downloads

As ever, the moral of the stock story is simple. Shoot fruit!

I had heard of BlipFoto a good while before I joined. I had resisted joining as the (erroneously perceived) burden of taking a daily photo seemed a bit much and, after all, I took a lot of photos anyway. But, I decided to have a go and I’m very glad I did for many reasons, but here are a dozen of them because, in the same way as I love taking photos, the internet loves lists. And I’ve thrown in a few of my favourite blips to make this post slightly less of a text-fest.

Hopefully it will encourage you to do as I did and give it a go.

1. To Make You Use Your camera

   This may be a blindingly obvious statement but the simple fact is that I know LOTS of people who have very good cameras that hardly ever see the light of day. I say to them simple things like “you should take more photos” and they say “oh, I don’t have the time” and I say “rubbish” and they say etc etc.

   I think the problem is pretty straightforward. You have to be in the habit of taking photos. If you’re not in the habit, life events pass you by and you get to the end of day saying “bugger, I forgot to take any photos“.

   By creating a BlipFoto habit you create the habitual urge to take photos. As a consequence you always remember to a) have your camera and b) use it. You will have many more photos to enjoy and good ones taken on your good camera – not just blurred nonsense on your phone ( although, as we will see, they’re allowed too).

   The habit’s thing in which we capture the conscience of the thing…

2. See something new in your world

   Trying (if you want to) to take at least one photo every day can be a bit of challenge and I, for one, have had to often resort to blurred nonsense on my phone. But, if you at least attempt to keep the quality a little higher than that then you’ll have to work hard to see something interesting in your usual surroundings. You’ve been at work all day, you’re tired, you can’t be bothered getting up never mind going out. But you want a good blip. So you have to get creative with things you see every day (or if you’re like me and many others you start harassing your pets).
   Some of my favourite blips are things that I’ve come up with simply from a wander round the house. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t no William Eggleston, but with the right eyes in your head you can find a good blip almost anywhere and that kind of training will make you a better photographer.
   Quite often I made it a game with my daughter and we’ve had great fun hunting out a blip for the day, that’s how we ended up with pots on our heads and the floor covered in smarties.
   

   Playing With a Torch

   

   Yes, that's where that avatar came from

3. Doesn’t have to be every day

   There is a key point to remember, you don’t have to do a blip every day. Obviously, the habit works best if you do but many, many people on BlipFoto don’t. You can upload when you have something cool, memorable or when you remember. Also, you don’t need to upload the day you took the photo. You can ‘backblip’ and the photo will go against the day it was taken, not the day it was uploaded, so you can catch up on 2 weeks of photos when you come back from holiday.

4. To remember

   You don’t realise until you do it for a while how unerringly useful having at least 1 picture from a given day is. Sure, this may not be the only way to keep track of your life but as side benefit to all the other good stuff it’s pretty handy. On a number of occassions I have used BlipFoto to tie events back to dates. “When did we go to X?” “Hang on I’ll just check BlipFoto“.
   And, when you get over 1 year of blips to get a handy thumbnail link the picture on the same day in the previous year. It’s quite good fun to announce to a disinterested family “Did you know that on this day last year we were having a lot more fun than we are today?“.
   Memorable events can also drive your blips – here is a small selection of events that I represented by my blip on that day.
   My Steve Jobs Tribute 
   The Day I Went To Auschwitz
   When my Blip  was on the BBC website
   When times were hard
   When teeth fall out
   When the Tories were elected

5. Channel your OCD

   If you’re going to be a wee bit OCD about things then you can do yourself a big favour by channeling it all into securing a blip each day.
   

   What a Fine Choice of Book

6. Special events

   Every now and then the gang at BlipFoto will announce an extra special project where Blippers get to contribute to an art project or competition.
   Both Blip Together and Life Turns invited Blippers to contribute frames for a film. Have a click and see. There is a new project on the way soon.
   _unstaged and Momentum were photography competitions organised by Blipfoto in association with Channel 4.
   

   One of my _unstaged entries

   My favourite impromptu event was when a Scottish journalist suggested that people who Blip are all ponces. The reaction was swift and entertaining, we were all invited to take a photo of ourselves poncing about. This was mine.
   There is also a new bike related craze called Hubshot.

7. Community

   Whether it is via subscriptions to people’s photos, comments or chat in the forum, BlipFoto has a very vibrant, helpful and happy community. I don’t comment as much as I should but many people take time to leave comments on your images. The forums have weekly challenges and lots of chat. A group of my colleagues also have our own themed weekend blip challenge.

8. Built in Edinburgh!

   Only slightly parochial. I’m from Edinburgh, BlipFoto is from Edinburgh so, support the team, wear the colours. I first heard if BlipFoto when Blipper Scobes was spotted by us taking this blip of one of our charity bangers. To further reinforce the community aspect, he then kindly donated money to our cause.

9. To explore the world

   I saw something recently that said there are now Blippers from 172 countries in the world. Not all will post a photo every day but you will get a great view of what the world looks like today or any day. Not only that, there are lots of great photographers all over the world and by posting their images on BlipFoto you get to see some wonderful views of the world.
   

   My Blip From Budapest

10. To witness events

    The global nature of BlipFoto means that when there is something big happening in the world, there is usually one of more Blippers in the vicinity to capture a personal view on what is happening. A few such events stand out for me such as the New Zealand earthquake and the tragic events in Norway. As much as these events are covered in the news, getting a reaction from someone who is there is many more times powerful.
    As well as major world events, you can also dip in to many small things in people’s lives, birthdays, births, holidays and happy days – a wide variety of small windows on the world.

11. Books!

    A fairly recent addition to BlipFoto, you can now get your photos from a year made into very lovely looking range of books and calendars. Have a look at the BlipFoto shop and you’ll see.

12. Widgets and Apps

    Look to the left of the screen, you’ll see my last 3 blips displayed directly from BlipFoto by a script written by yours truly. Thankfully there is no an official version that does it much better! As well as a range of such widgets, there are also BlipFoto apps from Android and iPhone which makes getting that all important daily photo that much easier. You can see all the widgets and apps here.

Budapest very quickly raced towards the top of my favourite cities chart. Lots to see and do, a great atmosphere and lots of stuff lit up and night. Here are a few photos from a photo walk we did on our last night around the bridges over the Danube. I didn’t take a tripod with me for weight reasons so these were taken with an increasingly wobbly GorillaPod or, mostly, on any flat surface I could find.

You can download free hi-res versions of these images from Morguefile here.

I’m not going to do an extensive zoo review but suffice to say that Rotterdam Zoo is truly excellent. Well laid out, some excellent habitats and, above all, from a photographer’s perspective, many great opportunities to get a close, clear view of the animals. This was first time ever that I was able to get my 70-200mm lens so close to animals it was unable to focus.

Only two regrets. It was a very dull, wet day which meant that there was absolutely no light at all. This made getting any decent images quite tricky. It also meant that the gorillas were sensibly hiding inside, bit disappointed I missed them. I would absolutely love to go back on a brighter day.

All of these images are available for hi-res free download from Morguefile here.

Sumatran Tiger

It was almost like this Sumatran Tiger had been trained to pose for visitors. It sat a few feet from the glass and happily posed for many camera clicks.

Sumatran Tiger

And was even good enough to look straight at the camera.

Red Panda

Delighted to get this shot of the Red Panda. I was hunting for the gorillas when I got a shout from one of my team of trusty spotters. I only just got there in time, a few seconds later he went back up into the tree and didn’t come back down. A great example of how you can shoot animals at the zoo with no fences or bars in the way, there was nothing between me and the panda.

Crocodile Eye

That said, I was glad there was glass between mean this crocodile. Like the tiger, it was almost like he knew where to sit, right next to the glass where you could get really close.

Prairie Dog

The prairie dogs came closer than anything. They jumped up on the wall next to you meaning I had to step back a bit to get the lens to focus.

Baby Elephant

The baby elephant was a lot of fun. He was clearly intent on mischief, kicking an adolescent elephant until a fight broke out and one of the adults had to step in to break it up.

Maribou Stork

You can see these guys might have given Irvine Welsh nightmares. Not the most attractive of beasts but they do have the major photo benefit of being happy to stand still a lot.

Flamingo

Same goes for the flamingoes. And they are quite a bit prettier.

Kimodo Dragon

I love the menace suggested by the feather hanging out it’s mouth. Not the biggest Kimodo Dragon but was still quite scary to stare down.

Ray

The Oceanarium is excellent but, as ever, the low light makes it very tough to get any decent shots. Proof, as if it were needed, that I need a new camera that does more at higher ISO.

Toucan

I watched this toucan pick grapes out the hole for quite a while. He was clearly being made to work for his food.

Spoonbill

I like the photo as it looks like the Spoonbill is standing on the bottom of the photo.

Wolf

Didn’t see the wolves for a while and then I got a shout from my trusty spotter when this one ran up and started to try and get something out the water.

Giraffe

The giraffe enclosure is very impressive. You can get very close to the giraffes when they are indoors.

Firstly, onto Hampstead Heath where people were out enjoying the sun and generally chilling.

And reading newspapers on top of Parliament Hill.

And parking their Chevy Impalas…

A brief hop on the tube.

Down to Camden for the market, which was extermely busy and full of life.

Many people were gathered around the lock.

Tis a very colourful place with people selling every from food…

…to carpet…

…or some very large boots…

…or very cheap sunglasses…

Earlier this week, I visited a National Trust property that didn’t allow photography. I think that is reasonable, there was enough art about the place to think that the paintings might not react well to a lot of flashes. Thing is, when I asked at the desk to check, the pleasant young chap confirmed no photography was allowed and directed me to the tour guide that was for sale. This again, could be valid. If  you want to remember what it was like and you can’t take photos, buy the book. Something I have usually done a lot of.

But it got me to thinking. There must be some cases where the ban on photography is simply an attempt to protect sales of guide books, postcards etc. I wonder if such places need to wake up the marketing potential of allowing photography and the subsequent social aspects of sharing the images. What better way to get people to visit (and therefore increase revenue) then for them to show all their friends how much fun they’re having at your attraction? I bet you could do some research to prove that by allowing the taking and sharing of photographs you can easily surpass the revenue from the, somewhat outdated, media of books and cards. Maybe it has already been done and I’m stating the obvious.

Whenever I enjoy somewhere I always share photography (such as this post on the excellent Camera Obscura) which will hopefully help spread the word and get people to visit. You’ll find a number of similar examples herein e.g. the museum of flight and the national museum).

As I said, I always respect the no photography sign on the basis despite the fact that I never use of flash. I understand that explaining shooting low-light, no flash, high ISO isn’t worth the conversation. Also, the total inability for people to realise that, in a lot of circumstances, their ever-present point and shoot flash will make for a terrible picture gets up my nose a wee bit too.

I’ve seen places where the location charges extra if you want to take photographs (such as the Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow). I paid the money and took the photographs. This could be a way of limiting the amount of flashing going in, same applied in the Cathedral in Krakow where that made sense. Although I doubt there was much to be damaged by a flash in the mine (and I didn’t use one) it is at least an honest/overt way of making up for the loss of postcard revenue, my argument for the benefits of allowing the taking and sharing of images still stand.

I have no photos of the Postojna Caves in Slovenia as photography wasn’t allowed. Rest assured that most of Europe ignored this!