On My Bike

From a series of photos entitled "Crawley Closed" an image that seems to be a sign of the times repeated up and down the country, can't help thinking that if the landlords weren't so greedy smaller businesses could move in and regenerate the town….


See Flickr album

THis is great, a Yeoman Warder (Beefeater) tour guide keeps the crowd smiling and laughing during a visit to the Tower of London.
The first of four....

DAM stands for digital asset management and covers the entire aspects of structuring, retrieving and sharing your photos. If you're an advanced amateur or professional photographer, you need a wide range of tools to keep your digital projects creative and organised. Many provide all the essentials in one package. Having been an avid fan of iView for many years I was looking to upgrade, unfortunately the iview team sold-out to Microsoft and in turn they sold it on to Phase One and there seems to be very little support or development, but even so it’s still a great bit of software. But! (there’s always a “but”) I recently purchased a new Apple mac and was looking to upgrade the software to use the full power of the Mac, so Aperture was the obvious choice, as with all Apple software it’s easy to use and never lets you down, but Adobe have also thrown their hat into the ring with Lightroom 3 along with Phase One, Bibble and Portfolio so I downloaded the trial versions to compare.
 
Aperture
http://www.apple.com/uk/aperture/
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Lightroom
Lightroom http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshoplightroom
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Phase One
Phase One http://www.phaseone.com/en/Software/Capture-One-5/5-Overview.aspx
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Portfolio
Portfolio http://www.extensis.com/en/products/
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iView
iView http://www.phaseone.com/Phase%20One/Online-Store/Expression%20Media.aspx
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Bibble 5
Bibble 5 http://www.bibblelabs.com/

I settled for “Adobe Lightroom” what really sets this apart from the others and make this the winner for me is the huge array of Black and White pre-sets and plug-ins, up until now no software has been able to compete with the darkroom when it comes to creating beautiful black & white images, but Lightroom has got me excited about mono images again. Its interface is clean & tidy with everything easy to hand, and if you are stuck they have the biggest collect of online tutorials of any software product I’ve ever seen, thanks to Julieanne Kost and Adode TV.
So move over Darkroom and bring on Lightroom.
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Julieanne Kost tutorials can be found at
http://tv.adobe.com/show/adobe-evangelists-julieanne-kost/

Along with Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy,
he captured and helped create the 'Swinging London' of the 1960s

Another part of my youth torn away with the sad news of Polys death.

Former punk star Poly Styrene who front X-Ray Spex, died today afther a battle with cancer.

Real name Marianne Elliot-Said, she had cancer of the spine and breast.

Poly was one of the first female punk icons.

Poly formed her band after watching the Sex Pistols perform on Hastings Pier on her 18th birthday, with her unpolished vocals and unorthodox style she became known for her rallying cries against consumerism and environmental destruction.

Poly Styrene occasionally re-emerged into the limelight, and released her third solo album, Generation Indigo, last month.



http://www.poly-styrene.co.uk/