Get The Picture?

Holiday Sunset

It's not that long ago that advances in photography , to me , was a 36 picture film reel , which I took my pictures on , hoped they'd turn out ok , then happily drop them into Boots or Jessops , or Max Spielman's and then wait a couple of weeks to see the results. Then you could also get them put onto CD which was really impressive. To get a digital camera that came anywhere near your common or garden film camera would set you back the best part of a grand.

Two Horses

Nowadays you can pick up very good digital cameras for around £50 and get the instannt gratification of seeing immediate results, and the luxury of discarding the rubbish. Last week I took 175 photographs and videos which took up a gigabyte of storage . i cand sift through and adjust , picking oout the best ones, or what I think are the best.





However I really don't know what I'm doing , it's a case of point and hope for the best. Professional photographers know what they are doing , and are able to guarantee the best results whereas I just hope for the best. Mark Johnson is and excelelnt example of someone who know's what he's doing and examples of  his work can be found on his website www.shineyblack.co.uk.

Can You Believe They Put A Man On The Moon?

Always regarded myself as a knowledgeable Pink Floyd fan so was surpised when my friend Mark Johnson asked me if I had a copy of "Moonhead" by them . I assumed it was a bootleg or something but was a commissioned piece for a 1969 broadcast of Omnibus on the BBC. The piece is reminiscent of stuff like "Set The Contols For The Heart Of The Sun" and "Careful With That Axe Eugene" driven by a descending Roger Waters bass riff.

It is amazing how the net allows us access to so much material we thought was lost forever , or in this case we didnt even know it existed!!

The Joy of Communication

Thanks to TV , Radio , Newspapers and the Internet we can find out things that we want to know and and a lot of things that we don't.

The success of the internet , effectively invented by Tim Berners-Lee is due to the fact that it was open source and therefore free to use. Yes you pay for access via your connection , but the internet itself is free to use. If it hadn't been it would have just become another closed network. This was explained to me on TV last night on a program I caught some of while channel hopping , but it was probably on BBC4.

This morning Terry Wogan on the radio mentioned a cook who "peeled peas" , I hope this was a joke rather than some mad new cooking methodology, Sunday Lunch will take weeks to prepare unless Primark take over the supply with their vast army of slave labour (how else do you sell shirts for £3 , it's certainly not economies of scale).

One of the things the internet allows is anyone can use it to be contacted or to advertise effectively for free , though people have to be able to find you. Here are four sites which are essentially information sites about the owner and their trade but have still managed to generate sales of their products be it pictures or plants.

• Woodlands Nursery - Plants in Louth, Lincolnshire


• Bob Armstrong - Landscape Artist


• Mark Johnson Travel Photography - Some amazing European photography


• Paul Campbell - Scriptwriter (Eastenders , Casualty , Doctors . IMDB Entry here)


• Mark Johnson Aircraft - Professional Aircraft photography featuring some amazing shots.


• Harry Willis - Gas Boiler Servicing and related services in Newcastle

These are the new equivalent of the card in the shop window or phonebox, but with a potentially wider audience, and they show that the internet is for everybody and anybody.

Anyone Can Do The Web ...

..but not everything is worth looking at. The web or net or whatever you want to call it , is a great leveller , in that absolutely anyone can create a website , which means theres an awful lot of dross out there, full of "Under Construction " signs , or just unfinished and left to rot or just plain bad. The main thing about a web site is that it must do what it's supposed to do , no more no less. Amazon is a great example of something that doesnt look great , but allows you to do what you need (ie buy stuff ) , very efficiently. Play follows it very closely in this.

Then you get entertainment sites such as JibJab which allows the sending of e-cards and is one of the few sites of this ilk that is worth visiting. You can see various examples of Jib Jabbery throughout this blog , such as here.

There's also the personal websites that are the equivalent of cards in the shop window , but can be made to look like a page out of Vogue such as Mark Johnson's Photography Gallery , with an example picture below, which is a small catalogue of the sort of photographic work he undertakes. This includes commercial photography and travel photography as well as bespoke photographic commissions:



Another is Bob Artstrong's Paintings Gallery which displays some of Bob's work (he's an excellent Lincolnshire based artist) and has news about exhibitions and the like . One of his paintings is displayed below:



And finally this last one is for Woodlands Nurseries in Louth , an excellent plant nursery in Lincolnshire,which is an online news and plant catalogue, with many pictures of the beautiful plants available to the public:


And then there's the more mundane but neccessary world of Gas Boiler Servicing and the like . And my mate Harry Willis has his own site to advertise his services, such as installation , radiatore sytem flushing as well as annual bioler serviceing in the Newcastle area here.