fotdmike's blog/

Having become increasingly disenchanted with Flickr (good though it still is) thought I'd best start looking for an alternative photohosting/sharing site... just in case I decide to move.

Well, I tried Picasa ages ago and didn't like it. Same with ImageShack. More recently I've played with SmugMug, and Zooomr. Both looked as though they had potential but, digging beneath the surface a little, both presented me with "issues" that I'm not really prepared to make the effort to resolve (or rather, attempt to).

So somehow I've landed up here at Ipernity and have to confess that first impressions are very favourable.

But before I give Flickr up totally (if indeed I ever do) I'll probably just mess around here for a few months to see how things work out.

[Edit 15 April '08: More thoughts/comments on this over at my wordpress blog Adventures of an Idiot]

For some time now photographers in the UK covering protests and demonstrations, be they professional photographers or "citizen journalists", have been on the receiving end of some fairly harsh treatment at the hands of the police.

But this is no longer an issue that simply affects "news gatherers".

Increasingly (and especially in the US and the UK) even ordinary photo enthusiasts (and by "ordinary" I mean in a non-derogatory sense folk who aren't "news gatherers") are finding they're on the receiving end of often unwarranted hassle from both the police and other security types.

Recently the situation was exacerbated by the UK's Metropolitan Police calling for everyone to report "suspicious behaviour"... like taking photographs!
I, and many others, have been stopped in the process of taking photographs of perfectly innocent scenes, even though well within my legal rights. (This is particularly perverse given that the UK has been called "one of the most watched societies in the world" via CCTV in public places... all, be it noted, installed without our permission or consent!)
I believe this is a trend that needs to be both exposed and opposed before it becomes so entrenched in the mass psyche that all photographers, regardless of what they may be doing, are looked upon with suspicion.

Many photographers, both professional and amateur, are seizing the baton and trying to increase public awareness of this trend.
Having just recently joined the Ipernity community I was really pleased to discover a mate of mine already here, and we immediately "conspired together" to set up a group here focussing on this, and other news/social documentary issues, so please do check it out and, as you're obviously into photography, think about joining.
After all, as my mate has said elsewhere...

"I think ALL photographers must realise they have to stand up and be counted and not expect to sit back and think there is someone else doing it for them!"

Walking along by the side of the river in Bedford I happened to spot this little fellah. Initially I almost missed it cos I thought it was a branch sticking up out of the water. But then it moved! Wow!

Never seen one like this before, not along there anyway, so I was real pleased to capture it, even though the pic may leave something to be desired technically speaking.

Just wish I knew a bit more about birds cos I haven't got a clue what he/she is. Heron? Crane? Dunno!

(More about this session at Adventures of an Idiot)

Went to stay with a photo-enthusiast mate of mine up in Derbyshire for a few days.
Late afternoon/early evening he suggested we go out for a stroll around his village, and of course I took the cameras with me.

"So where are all the pics he's taken of his locale?" I asked myself, for the scenery was absolutely delightful, and I had a hard time controlling the impulse simply to "point and shoot"... and that with a dSLR!

Maybe we sometimes need a stranger's eye just to see the beauty and "interestingness" that's around us all the time.

(The Little Eaton in Derbyshire set, which contains a mere fraction of the pics I actually shot!)

Most of the photos I've added since arriving at Ipernity, and indeed most of those I expect to add over the next couple of months or so, are imported from my Flickr stream using the Flickr2Ipernity Greasemonkey script.

Doing it this way means of course that the date tags on these pics are the date they were originally uploaded to Flickr rather than when imported here.

Still being somewhat undecided how I will use/integrate the two sites, at the moment I'm still using Flickr as my principal photo-sharing site so consequently that's where the bulk of my output will be, with a selection ending up here.

For the time being!