Sunday, May 31, 2009

PhotoVoice

Since my dry cabinet is as tightly packed as a Tokyo commuter train on a Monday morning I’ve refrained from buying any new gear lately. I mean, how many lenses does a guy really need? I’ve already got everything covered from 10 to 200mm, some of it pretty nice Canon ‘L’ glass too. But I have my favourites and there's some duplication and I know I’ll never use some of them again. A few haven’t seen the light of day in almost a decade and have little resale value but somehow I can’t bear to bin them. So what to do? Enter PhotoVoice. PhotoVoice is a charity that enables those who have traditionally been the subject of documentary photography to take control over how they are perceived by learning to photograph for themselves. And what does such a charity need? Donations of cameras and lenses of course.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Ankle Shackles and Nice Men

I'm always interested to see where my photo site visitors come from, and what they look at. But it's what they search for that amuses me. It's not my best images that get the most hits - it's the ones that have keywords matching commonly searched words of phrases. Strangely, for my site that means two of my more obscure photos get the lion's share of the hits. If you're looking for photos of nice men (as many people are) you may find this shot of some likely lads outside the 'Nice Men' tailor in Kerala, India.
And if you're looking for photos of ankle shackles you might land on this shot from the Tuol Sleng Khmer Rouge museum in Phnom Penh.
Needless to say these visitors don't hang around browsing my other images - they're off like greased lightning to find what they were really looking for. I really must pay more attention to my keywording in future.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Disappearing Singapore


When I heard that yet another of Singapore's heritage landmarks was going to be torn down I thought I'd better take a few snaps. I intended to go back and ask to photograph inside but of course time passed and I forgot. And today as I drove past the building site where it once stood I instantly regretted having let it slip my mind. When the New Seventh Storey Hotel was was established in 1953 it was the tallest structure in the Beach Road area and, hard to believe today, it offered views of the shoreline which is now considerably further away due to much land reclamation of the past few decades. In recent years the hotel had rather oddly stood on its own, surrounded by a flat grassy area where once-crowded shophouses used to be. Its fate was problably sealed a long time ago, just a temporary stay of execution saving it from the bulldozers. My father will be sad to hear of its demise - he used to tell stories of his time on National Service in Singapore in the late 1950's. He told of having 'Taxi Dances' at the Seventh Storey Hotel. It all sounded very exotic to a young boy growing up in Glasgow in the sixties.