2010 Christmas lights, Carnaby Steret

Carnaby Street Xmas Lights - 4, originally uploaded by Cybermyth13.

Carnaby Street has a new theme for its lights, Outer Space. Although it includes santa in a space helmet, it is not particularly Christmassy, but it is colourful with a red saturn and golden rings, a white moon and other planets and stars of many colours.

Oxford Street and Regent Street have similar lights to last year, but Regent Street has added pictures of the main characters in the Chronicles of Narnia films.

My 2010 Christmas pictures on Flickr can be seen by clicking here

Pictures of the sky

Contrails in the shape of a cross on a Sunday, originally uploaded by Cybermyth13.

Sometimes the simple pictures work best. It started as a bit of a joke. When the planes were not flying because of the ash cloud from Iceland, it was suggested that there were fewer clouds because of the absense of contrails or vapour trails from planes. So I posted a picture of the clear blue sky over Leicester Square. It was a completely blue picture of the sky. When the planes returned, I posted a picture of a plane with a contrail in a blue sky. I then progrssed onto pictures of storm clouds and an odd isolated cloud in the shope of a spaceship. Then one Sunday afternoon I noticed how busy the sky was. In particular two contrails crossed each other and looking through the camera I realised some shapes coulld be created from the white trails against a blue background. My favourite was the simple cross above. The lesson is to look up to see the pictures in the sky.

To see the other pictures mentioned on Flickr, click here

Saturday Evening, 2009 Serpentine pavilion, London, England

Sometimes it is difficult to know at what angle to display a photo. Personally I prefer the photo as above but in order to make sense of the picture you need the photo as it was taken below.

Saturday Evening, Serpentine pavilion, London, England, originally uploaded by Cybermyth13.

The photo was taken on a Saturday evening at the 2009 Serpentine Gallery Summer Pavilion, designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the architecture firm SANAA. More pictures of the pavilion can be seen in Flickr here and in my other blog here.

The Pope and Popemobile in the Mall, London

The Pope and Popemobile in the Mall, London, originally uploaded by Cybermyth13.

In September the pope was visiting London. I was not sure of his exact itinerary but I knew he was going to be in the Mall on Saturday evening on his way to Hyde Park. I managed to be in the Mall by 6.30 and there were many people there. I picked a spot and waited. When the pope came past, I took a few photos and then realised that if I ran ahead a little I could overtake the pope and get some more photos. I managed to do this a few times. By the end many in the crowd were doing much the same to get another look at the pope.This may be why the crowds were reported to be so large, it was the same people running along to get another look.

I was actually disappointed with my photos. Although the popemobile was going slowly, it was moving so there was a lot of blurring. In some the pope was looking the wrong way, but I did get one good photo of the pope. So I posted to Flickr that one (I had to crop it a bit) and one of the crowd in the Mall awating the pope. I was expecting quite a few other pictures to be posted as so many people were taking photos, but doing a search I found very few other pictures posted. Indeed I had many views from people doing searches on Google for variations on Pope, Mall, London. I did find one good set of pictures but these had been labelled "Popemobile in the Mall" so had not appeared in the searches for the pope.I did point this out to him and he has since relabelled the pictures but he had missed out on a number of views. There was also a Paddypower popemobile with a fake pope, as well as a protest march against the pope earlier in the day. Thus I was pleasantly surprised to get over 150 views each for my pictures in a week.

A strange construction - James May's Lego House, Denbies Wine Estate

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James May's Toy Stories - Lego House, Denbies Wine Estate, originally uploaded by Cybermyth13.

At first this looks like an ordinary building site. The odd thing about it though is that the building is made of Lego, that well-known childrens' toy. It was built as part of the TV series James May's Toy Stories. The idea was to build a house made entirely of Lego. For some reason they chose to build the house in a vineyard near Dorking. It so happened that I was visiting my mother in Dorking every Saturday afternoon, so was able to follow the progress of the house building.
They started by constructing hollow "bricks" out of 272 individual lego bricks. For safety reasons they used a wooden frame and constructed the lego walls around the frame. As the "bricks" were hollow, they went around the wooden supports without touching them, so the lego was in fact self-supporting.
When the house was complete, the presenter James May spent a night in the house including sleeping on a bed made of lego. Unfortunately it was too expensive to move the house, so soon after completion the house was demolished, with the lego being given away to charities.
Until recently this was my most viewed photo, probably because it looked so odd.

Construction took place during August and September 2009. The TV programme was shown in the UK in December 2009. I have a set of photos on Flickr of the construction and demolition (click here) and on my other blog. Conor's pix (click here).

The completed building

Search Amazon.com for james may
James May's Lego House
James May's Toy Stories
James May's Toy Stories - Entire Series [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]

Why I started on Flickr - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, originally uploaded by Cybermyth13.

I was listening to the radio one evening in August 2009 and heard a bamd Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros playing some songs live in the studio. They mentioned that they would be playing in Victoria Park, London, on Friday afternoon. The park is not often used as a music venue, particularly on a Friday afternoon, so I checked online to find the details. It was to be an acoustic set at the bandstand starting at 2pm.

So I turned up at 2pm in Victoria Park and there were some people waiting around but not much sign of the band. Eventually some vehicles appeared with the band members (about 10 of them) and a piano emerged from a small van. By the time they had set up, a reasonable crowd had formed. I had my camera with me so while they played I took some pictures, as did several others.

A few days later I went online to see what pictures other people have posted online of the performance. The best selection was on Flickr so I decided to post some pictures on Flickr and see what happens.

Initially they did not seem to be much interest in my Edward Sharpe pictures. However I then got some viewings through images.yahoo.com . Gradually the photo worked its way to first entry on any search for Edward Sharpe on images.yahoo.com . I think people were clicking on it because it looked so unusual and because people were clicking on it, it moved up the search results.

The band has gone on to have success in America, including appearing on the Letterman show and several festivals, so the picture got lots of views. Eventually it was surplanted in the search by more recent photos of the band but it has been one of my more successful photos in terms of views, thanks to yahoo.

Photo of the Week - Giant Rabbit on Hackney Road by ROA

Giant Rabbit on Hackney Road by ROA, originally uploaded by Cybermyth13.

Sometimes a photo takes on a sudden significance that it did not have before. That happened to my picture of the Giant Rabbit on Hackney Road by ROA. It had already had 252 views since I had posted it on Flickr on 2 May 2010 but it then had 8 views last Monday and 79 the folowing day, mostly from searches on Google. My own search on google revealed the news that the painting was under threat from Hackney Council, with an article in the Guardian giving the details of the dispute with the owners of the building. Wednesday saw another 58 views, again mostly through Google. On Thursday evening there were some referrals from an American website metafilter. com. Following the link back I found a news item on the painting, with a link to the Guardian website and a link to my photo given as "a slightly clearer picture". This link alone led to about 1100 views in 24 hours. Overall the photo went from 252 views to 2,112. my first picture over 1500 views.

I then found a copy of the Guardian article on the website of the owners of the building. Strangely unlike the Guardian website it showed my picture at the top of the article. I checked the local library and its copy of the newspaper had the same photo as the website. I think that they had initially used my picture for the article but then realised that they did not have permission to use my photo so used a different photo. So my picture did appear in some copies without permission (or payment).

ROA's graffiti rabbit faces removal by Hackney council, Guardian website, 25 Oct 2010.
Protect the London rabbit, Metafilter article. 28 Oct 2010.
Save The Rabbit!. The Premises website