Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Some of the cool things I have found lately that are photography related.

Tools

• Flickr Screensaver – this is awesome! can pull any users or group of users photos from flickr as a screensaver, by tags even! And it runs on multiple monitors. In my case all 6! Download Flickr .Net Screensaver free from CodePlex
• Producer for PowerPoint

Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint provides users with many powerful new features that make it easier to synchronize audio, video, slides, and images to create engaging and effective rich-media presentations. Producer gives content and media professionals, as well as everyday PowerPoint users a host of new content authoring features.

• Compfight – a flickr searching tool – excellent for finding photos for use in blog posts. Its where I found the picture in this article of the tools.

Local Camera Groups and Clubs (for me)

• Photographic Society of Queensland
• Brisbane Camera Group
• PSQ2010 Photography Convention

Other

• Dreamstime Stock Photo Site
• 1x.com – premium quality photo site

Today I am focussed on clearing out my browser from all the interesting things sitting there. No real organisation to this post – its just a link dump.

• Smashing Magazine useful web design information
• Feeling “Blogged Out?” [10 Pro Bloggers Share Their Advice on What to Do]
• David Willersdorf’s blog
• Australian Institute of Professional Photography
• Judith wrote up the story of last weekend’s DirtFest Adventure on her blog
• My photos from the Salomon Tre-X Triathlon – I was the official photographer for the day
• Results from the DirtFest and Triathlon on the in2adventure website. I got 24th from 32 entrants in my class and 43rd overall.
• Internet Explorer 9 is coming and you can test drive it. It might even be standards compliant!
• Australian students rejoice – you can get Office 2007 with a free upgrade to Office 2010 for only $75.
• Likewise any purchases of Office 2007 now are available with a free upgrade to Office 2010.
• Judith’s team is entered in the Oxfam Trailwalker Sydney – a 100km endurance walk challenge.
• Taking photos with motion blur
• Importing text files in Excel 2007

And I will leave you with some of my best photos from the Triathlon.

Microsoft Office 2010

There are some nice new things to get used to in Office 2010. I’m loving and hating Outlook. The conversations are great and painful at the same time.

Thank goodness for Xobni or I think I would go mad trying to find some emails.

I do have two exchange accounts running in Outlook, hence the reason I had to go to the Beta. The good news is the RTM version is now only 2 months away.

I’m running 32bit Office 2010 at the moment. Here are some articles about the differences between 32bit and 64bit.

• Understanding 64bit Office
• Compatibility Between the 32-bit and 64-bit Versions of Office 2010

This one has been brewing for awhile.

I have an urgent need to let go and rant – and seeing as this is my blog I suppose its as good a place as any!

The subject is photography in public. The issue is the ignorance and paranoia out there.

Here are some recent times when I have been harassed.

At a public sports ground – several acres of open ground, with a tarmac cycle track around it on which a variety of people (adults and teens) were riding their bikes fast in training. I knelt and took two photos of riders beside the track – out in plain sight. Next minute I’m embroiled in an discussion with a shirt wearing government employee who was purportedly training these kids for triathlons. I in plain language told her they had no right to privacy, explained I was just randomly taking photos and that any body could do so. She brought over the parents who had been several hundred metres away and I proceeded to delete the (crappy) photos to shut them up and then went into the middle of the ground and took pictures of a land sailor.

See the kids in the background? they are probably 300-400 metres away from me at this point.

The next one was while sitting out in the parking rank at Brisbane airport taking pics of cars and baggage trolleys a security guard wandered up and asked if I was taking pics of the security guards. I said no. He proceeded to try and tell me that was illegal (which it isn’t).

Picture of baggage trolley at airport and a lady who may or may not have been or loved a marine – judging by the tattoo on her foot. Click the picture for the large view of the tattoo.

The next time was a funny one. I was in the local shopping mall dressed in my running gear on a late night – after being at running club - when the mall was full of young teens and their phone cameras and hand cams galore. I snapped this picture of some donuts and then the interesting lacework on the back of this ladies dress. A security guard then told me I couldn’t take pictures in the mall. I laughed and said surely that’s a policy that would be impossible to police – had he seen all the kids in there with phone cameras? He got all high and mighty and said he did police it well. I was in there least week and took specific notice. I watched kids taking photos of the aftermath of a fight while the security guards and police stood around and sported it out. None of them approached the kids with the handy snap cameras.

Today was a classic case of ignorance in several ways.

I was standing on a footpath in front of a a vacant section (house burnt down years ago). I as taking photos of an ant on some leaves (see the picture). The next house over is on double frontage, set back from the road some 50 metres and was probably 80 metres from where I was standing. After leaving the tree I was walking to my car parked up the road a bit further when the lady drove into her driveway as I was about to cross it and wound her window down and asked in a very annoyed voice “why are you taking photos of my house with a telephoto lens?”. I was holding it in my hand – i laughed in amazement and said its not a telephoto lens, I wasn’t taking photos of your house i was taking photos of a tree and pointed at it some 30 metres away. I said its not illegal to take photos of someone’s house anyway. She got all feisty and demanded “so why were you?” I reiterated i wasn’t and showed her the pics of the tree.

My annoyance stems form two things.

First the apparent assumption out there that anybody with an SLR camera is some kind of peeping tom, pervert, spy photographer or similar. I don’t see anybody with a hand snap camera being hassled in the same way.

Second the total ignorance of the law, or a deliberate attempt to ignore it. There exists NO RIGHT TO PRIVACY people except in places where you would reasonably expect it – e.g. a public change rooms or toilets or in your house. If you go out in public, expect to be photographed. If your house or yard is visible from the road, expect to be photographed. Google does it – has anybody seen street view for goodness sake They did it and it was legal – it still is. This lady today lives across the road from the train station carpark were there are numerous cameras on poles videoing every move. The funny thing is I am quite good friends with her husband, though she and I have never met before. I’m looking forward to that first introduced meeting! Oh and by the way darling – this is Tim!

Links for legal stuff

• Street Photographers Rights in Australia
• NSW Photo Rights – most of this is applicable to the rest of Australia thought here are some NSW specific bits.
• A good summary of rights and exceptions