I stumbled onto these videos by Keith Loutit sometime last year and thought I’d blogged about them back then. But apparently not. I should’ve done though, because they’re great. Then I saw them mentioned again last week and I’m captivated again.

I’m assuming that they’re made from video footage which has been split into frames which have then digitally edited to look like tilt-shift photography, and then put back together again as a complete film. Regardless, they look brilliant and every one is worth a watch.

Go and take a look at the series on vimeo. Superb stuff.

In case you missed it, for about a week at the start of the month, England went through a ‘big freeze’ where we had some snow (and sleet and ice. And sludge). Schools closed, offices were empty and people whinged. Well, some people did. Others made snowmen. I did both (snowmen at first / whinged when my fingers got cold).

So anyway. It came and went and now it’s like it never happened. Looking at the news for California however, reminded me of our own brief spell of adverse weather and thus reminded me that I’d taken a few photos of the snow. Most of them turned out a bit bland but there are now a few on my flickr if you’re interested. And that’s the point of this post .

That’ll be all.

It’s been a year and a half since I last went, but I’m still sorting through the photos.. Just got around to uploading another batch to flickr which you can go and look at if you like

Another flickr user that caught my eye and I thought was worth sharing – randhirsingh.

It’s always nice to spend 15 minutes or so just casually browsing around flickr because more often than not, you come across something that makes you want to get out there and start taking more photos.. Just a shame that it’s so cold out here at the moment. Definitely can’t be bothered to go outdoors and take photos haha

It’s been a while since I’ve taken any photos.. of anything.. I seem to go through these stages where I take a lot of photos, and then don’t for a long time. It’s not that I don’t want to. I keep on seeing photo opportunities and I mean to do something about capturing them, but I haven’t gone out with my camera for a while, and I’ve been fairly busy with other stuff.. etc etc etc.. So, I have to resort to ogling other peoples work. Like this stuff.

I can’t remember how I came across yyellowbird’s flickr page, but I’m glad I did. Lots of instant favourites. There’s dozens of sets to browse through if you have a minute or two. I really like the muted colours and dated retro feel of them. There’s a whole set called ‘lights‘ which features some lush bokeh and is just gorgeous. Very nice stuff.

It’s photos like this that make me want to pick up the camera again. Proper inspiration. Don’t be too surprised if some similar shots pop up in my photo stream at some point.. as a homage of sorts .

yyellowbird on flickr. Go and look.

I’m not usually one to get overly sentimental but this series of photos by Phillip Toledano actually almost brought a tear to my eye. Really.

‘Days With My Father‘ is a collection of photos he took of his 98 year old Dad as an “ongoing record of my father, and of our relationship … for whatever days we have together“. The photos alone tell an amazing story but occasionally, he’s added a couple of paragraphs to accompany the images and it’s those that perhaps strike the biggest chord. Clearly (based on the comments at the end of the project), it’s especially poignant if you’re in a similar situation, but I think for anyone that might feel like they don’t get to make the most of their time with a particular person, this site will bring it home.

Go look.

It wouldn’t be right to let such an awesome spectacle go completely unnoticed; although I think that the BBC are managing to single-handedly cover enough Olympic action for the whole world. Apparently if you were to take every televised minute and written sentence that has been produced by the BBC about this years Olympic games, turn them into tiny people called Olymbits whose natural inclination is to stand on each others shoulders Cirque du Soleil style, then climb up the Olymbit stack, you would actually bump into God and the baby Jesus in the sky. Apparently.

I actually love the amount of coverage the beeb are putting out this year. Non stop live coverage online for every event, mostly with video footage – 6 different live streams on the red button on tv – hours of dedicated coverage on the terrestrial channels – and 5 Live doing the business for the radio. It’s loco. All your needs catered for. Unless you’re not a sporting person of course. Actually, scratch that because surely no-one can deny how good these games have been. Pure entertainment and so many amazing feats I wouldn’t even know where to start with a list of my favourite things thus far. Though it would probably be something like…

The opening ceremony.

Managed to see bits of it while we were in Paris, and the sight of Li Ning running around the inside edge of the stadium roof was brilliant. Unless we have someone running in the London Eye like it was a giant hamster wheel, I don’t think we’ll be able to top that in 2012. (more pictures here)

Argentina coasting to the football final
After the mini dispute with Barcelona regarding Messi was sorted, they’ve not looked back, winning every game on the way to Sundays final against Nigeria and are moving one step away from retaining their Olympic title. I’m not a big Argentina fan (blame it on this) but they deserved to beat Brazil in the semis yesterday. Ronaldinho has been a bit of a non-event which doesn’t bode well for Milan this season but who knows.

Yelena Isinbayeva jumps insanely high (with a pole)
Helped in it’s greatness because of the ‘gonna kick her butt’ comments by her American rival who really couldn’t compete..

“For the first 90 minutes of the competition Isinbayeva did not attempt a vault but sat trackside, her baseball cap pulled down low over her eyes. When the bar reached 4.70m she decided to stop passing and cleared the height at her first attempt. By that point seven of the 12 competitors had been knocked out.”

- The Guardian

She then went on to sail over 5.05m (16ft 7in) for a new World Record. See, that strikes me as kinda cocky (and rightly so) but not as cocky as..

Usain ‘Lightning’ Bolt

How can someone not even really try for the last 10m or so and still get a World Record in the 100m(?) At least he worked hard for the 200m record last night. Both are unreal achievements but the latter in particular is probably more memorable. Michael Johnson, while commentating on the race, seemed happy for the Jamaican but surely deep down he’s curled up in a ball, hugging his gold shoes and weeping.

Natalie du Toit comes 16th in the 10k swim
16th doesn’t sound especially impressive but if you know about her, you’ll see why I think this is worth a mention. Good stuff. It’s the first year that the 10k outdoor swim has been an event, and I can think of few events that I’d least enjoy doing. Utterly knackering.

8 Golds, (7 World Records, 1 Olympic Record) for Michael Phelps
Not to mention approximately 173 drug tests too I’d imagine. Not that I’m trying to imply anything. He’s clearly not on performance enhancing drugs, he’s just a machine sent from the year 2029 by a race of artificially intelligent computer-controlled machines who want to crush every humans will to compete in swimming competitions in order to dominate the medals table in all future Olympic games. And speaking of the medals table..

Great Britain is 3rd
With 17 gold, 11 silver and 11 bronze (at the time of writing). Kudos to everyone involved. So many individual success stories and noteworthy moments but I’m happy to leave it at a general level of praise. Does this mean we get a massive bronze medal at the end?

Just three days left to go til the closing ceremony on Sunday and I’m sure it’ll be on a par with the opening. Politics aside, it looks like China have done a great job hosting this and heaped the pressure on London to match it in 4 years.. I’m sure it will. I mean, the logo is a great start isn’t it(?) What could go wrong(?)

Anyone know how to get tickets for the opening ceremony…?

It’s ridiculous.

Still going through photos from Paris and getting them onto flickr so feel free to stroll over now and then. I quite like this one. It’s funny going into the room where it is because there’s suddenly this mass of people who you just know are only there to see the Mona Lisa and nothing else. Y’know, like they’re on a coach tour of Paris and are trying to fit in all the big things. I wont lie, there wasn’t a massive amount in the Louvre that I was fussed about seeing but I’m happily ignorant about art. The Egyptian sections were great and it was nice seeing the Venus De Milo (though all I could think of was the Gummi de Milo) but I was really just too tired to take in much else. It’s overwhelmingly big (the museum) and there’s so so so so much to see if you’re into that type of thing.

Regardless, more photos to come!

Spent the weekend just gone in gay Paree and had lots of fun. It’s slightly odd that I’d not really been before (except as a very very young child) considering it’s a mere 40 minute flight away from Southampton (or a painstaking 6 hour flight/coach home via Birmingham – but the less said about that the better). Thankfully, the weather pretty much held out and we did the whole tourist thing in fairly decent sunshine and almost no rain. By ‘tourist thing’ I mean, queuing to get up the Eiffel Tower, queuing to get into Notre Dame and queuing to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre amongst other things it was fun. Most of the sights are within walking distance, but we ended up getting the metro to most places after the first day. Probably one of the nicest/easiest public transport systems I’ve ever been on. Good stuff.

Venturing into cafes for brunch or a quick pit stop occasionally only served to remind me how bad my French is but we got by with some really nice (if not a tad overpriced) meals. I’m so so so glad we never actually got ’round to ordering Steak tartare though. Ewww.

A selection of photos from the thousand or so that I took will be up on Flickr in dribbles over the next week or so, so have a look over there for the goodness. Til then, enjoy the 1 that’s attached to this post. Les parcs à Paris sont magnifiques!