2007 August | The World According To ...

Can I Have My Ball Please?

Can I Have My Ball Please?, originally uploaded by Russ G.

Daydream Believer, originally uploaded by Russ G.

One of my current favourite photographs of “H” with his head on his arm looking out from a moving steam train in PortAventura Theme park. The title comes from one of my favourite monkees song, that along with “Last Train to Clarksville” which I’m sure I’ll get on the title of a photo before long

Delightful Dahlia

Delightful Dahlia, originally uploaded by Sylpics.
Happy flowery Tuesday!

I just love the detail of this photo by Sylpics

Sunset & Silhouettes

Sunset & Silhouettes, originally uploaded by Russ G.

It’s always the way, your on holiday for a few weeks and it’s not until the last few days that you find a place you wish you had found earlier. This photo was taken at one of those places in Soleu or to be more exact at the end of the promenade off Soleu beach.

Walking right to the end of the promenade past all the big, glitzy bars and cafes trying to entice you in, you come to a headland and a new monument like a needle. If you carry on walking to the last bar and look back across Salou you get a fantastic view of Soleu and the mountains behind, as well as many locals fishing off the Promenade. I then sat out on the front of the last bar, with a cold beer (they also do a great Sangría) and watched the view as the sun went down that produced some fantastic shots I managed to capture.

You can see a few most shots I took here, before the beer and the great view took over

A great location and wished I’d found it sooner for the views and the beer!

Loops & Flowers

Loops & Flowers, originally uploaded by Russ G.
Description: Going under Dragon Khan

One of my other passions apart from photography is holidays, Theme parks, and Rollercoasters. So combining the three and I’m in heaven. The above photo was taken of the Dragon Khan Rollercoaster in PortAventura as I went under the ride sat on a steam train.

But the only way to ride a rollercoaster is at night and Dragon Khan is one of the best, one minute of sheer terror and all in the dark

Khan By Night, originally uploaded by Russ G.
Description: The only way to ride Dragon Khan – By Night!

Red Hot Poker

Fantastic photo of the Red Hot Poker flower taken at Hotel PortAventura, Spain. Also called a “raketblomst” (in danish). It is also called a kniphofia – Thanks to Lotte Grønkjær from Flickr

The things I like to see fixed on Zooomr

Don’t get me wrong I love Zooomr as a photo sharing site and have been through it’s journey from nearly the beginning. I also have the greatest admiration for Kris and what he’s done with Zooomr so far, but the upgrade to mark III left me a little perplexed and frustrated. Mark III introduced some great new stuff, such as zipline and marketplace, but we also lost some key things that I feel are the basis of a good photo sharing site (only my opinion). The following is a list of some of the things that I miss:

1. Photo titles and descriptions from the EXIF data are not picked up and pulled through on your uploaded photo’s
2. Unable to edit description text on photo’s unless you save a title.
3. Delete function and number of views missing on the main photo page.
4. Profile missing and need the ability to edit it again.
5. Ability to use Juploader or other external application.
6. Smartsets – You can’t add more than 12 sets. The logic for Smartsets is not fully working & you can’t manually add photo’s to a set.
7. Camera Information in a readable format, rather than camera:aperturevalue=5.000 for example. OK, I could work it out, but I’m lazy and when looking at other photo’s only want a quick look at the information.
8. Groups – Are not ordered in a proper list and you are unable to post photo’s to a group.
9. The option to login with username and password rather than openID isn’t available for existing users.

The first 5 issues are what are stopping me from completely moving over to Zooomr at this time, mainly because not having them means a lot of re-work for people uploading a significant number of photo’s in one go. The others are just annoying but work and I can live with, but would still like to know when they are getting fixed.

Again, I’m not having a go at Kris and Zooomr, but just hoping that these things are fixed soon so that I can spread to word on what a fantastic site Zooomr is and can be.

Also see my earlier post Flickr v Zooomr

Blue Moon

It was a lovely Sunday morning in the garden and I looked up to see the moon still out, so fired off this shot. The sky was so blue and the moon so clear I just sat and watched it for ages.

Can’t beat days that start like this

Flickr v Zooomr

Well not really one verses the other, but I was going to comment on my current dilemma in using both. I was going to write about my frustrations in using both, but Phill Price on his blog has beaten me to it here and pretty much covers the same reasons to mine.

That said I do love both and like Phill continue to use both until such time that one surpasses the other or I get fed up updating both. Anyway here’s a link to a photo on zooomr, so if you use Flickr go take a look and see what you think?