Elvis

Sitting on the fence

Three crow siblings sitting on a fence in Oxleas Woods. © Magnus Andersson

What does it mean?

A pair of Nike Air's up in the air in Deptford. © Magnus Andersson

I don't know what it means. You can see these sneakers thrown over telephone wires all over London and there are loads of urban myths about their significance but so far I haven't heard a credible one; gang territory, drug dealers spot, street art, someone died, the list goes on. Got any ideas? In Rotherhithe there's a large tree that is actually full of them and it all seems very mysterious to me, I'll see if I can find* a pic of that to update the post with.

On Monday I will go down to the PPY event at the National Theatre. I recommend all those in London to go and check out the exhibition, it runs from July 12 to September 19, a whole nine weeks. Last year it was seen by 250,000 people!

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*Updated 25/7, below is the previously mentioned tree in Rotherhithe.


© Magnus Andersson

Quack

Geese greedily eating our bread crumbs. © Magnus Andersson

Today was easily the hottest day of the year in London. I feel like cheese in a hot pan. Its wonderful when it happens because it feels like Tunisia all over again, except you can get booze wherever and whenever. Holiday extended!

iPhone dump #03

Line of yellow buoys in Greenwich Dock, Rotherhithe. © Magnus Andersson

Time for a little blog pause! I haven't been prolific in my postings lately and as I have the next two weeks off work, I've decided that I might as well officially rest the blog along with myself. A trip to Tunisia beckons and I think that the batteries will be recharged after that.

I've been told that there were some 70-odd applicants for the job we had going at the paper, luckily I wont be involved in sorting the wheat from the chaff, instead I'll be on a beach in north Africa with no internet access. Bliss.

BTW, these iPhone dumps are all shot and edited in-phone so to speak. The only Photoshopping I do on them is amending the meta data with a copyright notice and resizing them to be 750px wide, the rest is edited via either the brilliant Photogene and/or TiltShiftGen (such as the one above). I've also been in touch with Omer who developed the Photogene app and he will be looking into adding the GPS-location when tweeting a picture. That would be sooo nice.

Now I have to pack and I've been thinking about bringing the Hasselblad or perhaps the D700 with a 50/1.4, but this is a holiday after all, so the pack list reads: sunglasses, t-shirt, shorts, sandals, towel plus a good book and the LX3.

iPhone dump #02

Erosion. © Magnus Andersson

iPhone dump #01

Mother and baby statue inside the Stephen Lawrence Centre. © Magnus Andersson

The old man and the trees

The old man and the trees, plus his dog. © Magnus Andersson

Yesterday I had the honour of shaking hands with Sir Ian McKellen. Without doubt the pinnacle of my life. I'll tell you more once its been in the paper.

In other news: its quite difficult to get your hands on 120-film nowadays. Why is that?

You looking at me?

Regular stranger - the deaf white cat on Columbia Road, east London. © Magnus Andersson

Sleeping man

Collage of a man having an afternoon nap on a sofa inside the NFT, Southbank, London. © Magnus Andersson

I've been feeling a bit dozy lately, the dark days and the time of the year has all been taking its toll, plus there has been nothing but bad news internally at work, sadly the blog isn't the best forum to vent that stuff in (plenty of angry drafts that wont see daylight though).

On the photography front its been a bit quiet as well, but this is normal for this time of the year; the silly season is upon us and that means a lot of Xmas lights being lit up, kids performing their Xmas performances, etc etc, ad nauseum.

BUT...it is also three years ago since the first post appeared on this blog, and a lot has happened in that time. Print media is in big pain, Facebook came and went, Twitter has taken over the world, I've got eight pages of apps on the iPhone, yet the blog is still here (at least for a while longer, until we are all Google Waving each other).

I recently read a post on why having a blog might actually be more beneficial for us photographers than having a traditional homepage showcasing your work. Read it here, makes a lot of sense, plus it means I can still drag my ass on finding a decent web designer who can finally do some work on my homepage, which has been dormant since I bought the domain in 2006. If you know of someone good, drop us a line. Alternatively, send me a link to the best page on 'how to become a web designer in one evening'.

Just to give you an idea of the type of folks coming here for a look I shall present you with some stats, bear in mind that these only go back until May 2008 when I installed Google Analytics.

Most of all though, this goes out to my dad back home in Sweden. He gets on my back if I have been slack with blog updates, plus he keeps pushing up my Google stats as well.

Number of visitors: 5197 (since May '08)
Overall pages/visit: 1.55
Overall avg.time on site: 1 min 36 sec
Most visits in a day: 194 (Nov 28, 2009)
Top 3 countries: UK, then USA, closely followed by Sweden.


Geographical breakdown of the top three visiting countries. © Magnus Andersson

Most viewed post here. 838 times, and that stat will probably remain for a while. I'd much rather it was this one, currently lingering in the third most read post, and that moment was really funny.

On the browser front, Mozilla holds a steady 44%, while IE and Safari are tied on 25% each, leaving 6% of random connections. Bonus points for the person/s who are reading this through their PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable!

My favourite stat relates to the number of countries visiting: 85 (see image below)

Eighty five countries, that is mental! I love the internet! Thanks for looking!

(Sadly, Google doesn't supply stats from other planets yet)


Map of the world indicating (in green) where visitors have accessed my blog from. © Magnus Andersson

Cause of death still under investigation

Dead pigeon floating in Regents Canal, London. © Magnus Andersson

When you think about it, you don't see many dead animals around do you? Lots of living one's are all around us, scurrying, flying, skipping and jumping, barking, growling, howling, yelping, scratching and itching.

And if you ever have been to London, there is one animal that is omnipresent; the pigeon. Two things amaze me; you never see pigeon chicks and you never see dead pigeons. Maybe they are like elves? Perhaps they live forever?


The pigeon is from earlier in the year, but this big mama of a fish (possibly a carp?) is from yesterday. © Magnus Andersson

Rhianna inspired photograph

Old lady with an umbrella checking the view from the Somerset House terrace in the rain. © Magnus Andersson

I'm missing the summer of 2009...

Inner city cricket in London Fields, Hackney, summer of 2009. © Magnus Andersson


Bike on Broadway Market, Hackney, in the sunset, summer of 2009. © Magnus Andersson

Launch of a new category: randoms

No, I didnt Photoshop this. What you see is what you get as a photojournalist. © Magnus Andersson

I know that they have had bad weather and all at the moment, but what where they thinking naming this town in Cumbria? Cockermouth?

Once in a life time?

© Magnus Andersson

Certainly the first and probably the only time in my life that me and my car end up at the front of the queue as Tower Bridge opens to let through a tall boat.

There are flies on the windscreen

© Magnus Andersson

Its holiday time for me, but I'll attempt a picture or two....bonus points for knowing the band lyrics behind this blog title. I had to pull over just to get the shot. A bit of flash might have helped.

This happens to be a wasp, but hey, they are more useful than you'd expect. Check out last nights Autumnwatch on iPlayer (1st episode, but only if you live in the UK).