Photography

How Google hides free copies of public domain books while directing people to pay-for reprints

Google has been allowed to scan hundreds of thousands of out-of-copyright books from libraries around the world and supposedly this is a wonderful free resource for all of us. But, over the last year or two, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to find the free versions while Google Books presents reprints to buy. Here’s an How Google hides free copies of public domain books while directing people to pay-for reprints

My early photography and the twin-lens reflex camera

There wasn't any money to buy proper photographic equipment when I was growing up. So it wasn't until I got a part-time job after school that I was able to fund my interest, which was primarily in film-making by then rather than still photography.

Manchester Local Image Collection

I’m a huge fan of the Manchester Libraries Local Image Collection which puts 80,000 archive photographs at our fingertips online. A week I ago I discovered some changes had been made which meant the hundreds of links that I have from my website to theirs didn’t work anymore. But I’m glad to say that after Manchester Local Image Collection

Good news for photographers as ‘orphan works’ clause is dropped

Last night the government was forced to drop clause 43 of the Digital Economy Bill. This badly-thought-out legislation would have given publishers the freedom to use ‘orphan works’. In other words, any photograph belonging to a photographer who the publisher claimed could not be traced.

Keys copied from photos on Flickr

‘At a computer conference in Alexandria, Virginia, Stefan Savage, a computer security expert who led the “Sneakey” project, surfed the photo-sharing website Flickr and found pictures that clearly showed peoples’ keys, even if personal information in the shots had been blurred out. In one demonstration, the team cut duplicate keys after analysing images taken on Keys copied from photos on Flickr