Fellow Birmingham blogger Andy Pryke has recently written about the right to photograph in the UK. He points out that this BBC News article, including its quite interesting comments I might add, describes a worrying increase in the number of mis-informed police officers attempting to illegally stop photographers from taking pictures in public places. In some cases, officers even demanded that the photographer delete their images.

As pointed out by Linda MacPherson, a lecturer in law at Heriot Watt University, taking photographs in public is, except for a few specific exceptions, a right guaranteed by law in the UK. She has produced this rather useful factsheet for photographers, which can be carried around and checked up on if and when the police start making demands.

Austin Mitchell MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons calling on the government to clarify to police the law on the right to photograph, according to the BBC article. Andy Pryke also points out that there is an online petition in support of such a clarification, which can be signed here.

It seems that some of my photos on Flickr have caught the attention of some folk who make online guides to places, including Birmingham.










Schmap Guides, emailed me to ask if these two photos (of the Custard Factory and the view of Birmngham from the Clent Hills) could be included in their guide. Cool! Take a look here and here to see...

As previously advertised, we went of to Wales again this weekend, to get in some more serious walking.

We camped down at Llyn Gwynant, at the foot of Snowdon, but on Saturday took the long walk from Ogwen Cottage up and over Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach. I have only done that particular walk once before, a good few years ago, and attempting it again certainly made me feel a bit older! Still, we managed it and felt pretty pleased with ourselves (if a little tired) by the end of the 6 and a half hours.

The photos from the weekend are up on Flickr, and I've also added a new section of this site with more details of this and future walks. Click here to take a look.

The weather was also wonderful once more, and that made the camping great fun. I got to try out my new Trangia 27-8 stove, which is a fantastic little meths-burning lightweight piece of equipment. Mmmm... fried egg sandwich anyone?

I just spent the best part of last week in Wales. My girlfriend's family came over from California to visit, and so we've been travelling around visiting various places. I reckon we must have notched up about 1000 miles (including the two trips to Heathrow) in our whistle-stop tour of the Midlands and North Wales.

The weather in Wales particularly was amazing. We took a walk up around Cwm Idwal on Thursday and I got this shot, with which I'm really rather pleased.

My parents have also had the builders in this week on their house, and some major structural work is going on (pics to follow).

Well, summer appears to be almost upon us and I'm planning on getting out and about in the countryside with my camera over the next few weeks.. so expect more!

Yep, I've just bought a +3 close-up filter for my 50mm prime lens!

Not being able to really justify buying myself a proper expensive macro lens right now, I reckon that this might well whet my appetite a little. Here's one of my first shots with it.

Today saw the second Black Country Flickr Meet, following on from last month's inaugural do in Walsall. I took the reigns for this one, organising a route around Stourbridge, including the canals and old glassworks.

Not having organised one of these meets before, but taking inspiration from the nearby Birmingham Flickrmeet group, I was interested to see how the subject matter was received. All in all, I am very satisfied with how the day went; the weather stayed dry (and even sunny for a while), the buses cooperated, and we managed to get a snoop around inside the Red House Glass Cone, which was well worth the rather pleasant walk up the canal.

On a personal note, I'm also quite pleased with my photos from the day so far, which can be found in this set on Flickr. There is talk of the Black Country Museum for next month's meet, which I'm looking forward to.

As usual, comments on the photos are most welcome!

I've ordered some of these rather nifty-looking "Moo cards" today. They link in with Flickr, and produce a whole bunch of mini business cards with one of my photos on each. They were introduced to me by Simon "Sixball" Hammond a couple of weeks ago, and look like a much more interesting alternative to the usual American Psycho-esque attempts.

This move was also somewhat inspired by a trip I took to Southampton this week, where I ended up scribbling my email address on the back of a piece of ripped off paper. It works, but hey, this gets my photos out there a bit more. Looking forward to them arriving!

"I am not a professional photographer," writes moty66, a Flickr member and Kubrik fan, unknown to me, "but a friend of mine gave me a very nice LEICA M6 & LEICA SUMMICRON-M 1:2/35 mm as gift when I was in Palestine three weeks ago, and I tried to make some pictures with it, I used KODAK TRI-X 400 pro."

Looking for a bit of feedback about his first attempt at black and white photography on the relevant Flickr group, he signs off with "hope to see your comments about them".

So, I click his link and take a look. Unsurprisingly, given his post, the pictures are of Palestine. This one in particular caught me eye - of the infamous wall.

And why not? There's a lot of local activity that websites like Flickr have helped to generate, not least the blossoming Birmingham and budding Black Country Flickrmeet Groups, but what are the effects of attempting to gather all the citizens of the world's photos in one place? For one, I can look at moty66's photos of the Israeli "security fence" as if it were my Aunty passing round her holiday snaps over a cup of tea.

Previously of course, we've relied on newspaper photographers, television news and more recently news websites to provide us with this kind of footage, such as this offering from the BBC. Perhaps this pattern would have been interrupted by the odd exhibition at a local gallery.

So are sites like Flickr going to challenge traditional journalism? Do we need a reporter or photographer to distill what's going on in the world into news bulletins, when we can just ask someone who was there themself?

Until today, I hadn't really thought about social networking sites in quite this way. I think that they have earned themselves a new-found respect.