Aerial photography

Whenever I fly, I always try to get a  window seat. I love seeing the earth from above, a whole different perspective on the world. I hope for clear skies, so I can take photographs, even with my modest camera.

I've taken more than 250 pictures over the past few years, and I'll be uploading the best of them to flickr for the next few weeks. There are about 150, so I'll just do one a day!

First up is an amazing shot of mountains in Russia, taken during a Tokyo to Paris flight 3 years ago.  I love the sense of wide open space in this.

Keep an eye on my From Above flickr group for upcoming photos

7 Brilliant Shanghai World Expo 2010 pavilions

I think World Expos are rather fascinating - a great big gathering of nations all showing their countries to the world. It's a great big geography funfair! It's Eurovision for architects! (thanks Mr Clapham Omnibus) Ergo, it must be amazing.

Later this year, the 2010 World Expo is being held in Shanghai - with some amazing pavilions being built to showcase individual nation's landscapes and cultural outputs. Here are some of my favourites.

The Russian pavilion has 12 towers with white, red and gold designs inspired by traditional Russian womens' costumes. How very babushka.

The Israeli pavilion has two forms clasping on to each other - one modern, futuristic, constructed and one traditional, vintage, natural.

 The Swiss pavilion is a technological masterpiece with an interactive LED facade and electronic outline of the country's pictogram. But my favourite part is the chair lift on the rooftop.

The British pavilion is a striking piece of sculpture by artist Thomas Heatherwick. It's very striking and dramatic.

The Finnish pavilion looks modern, sleek and very Finnish minimalist cool. It's named kirnu - a giant's kettle - and its surface will resemble fish scales.

The pavilion for the United Arab Emirates is shaped like a sand dune.

The Polish pavilion has a designed inspired by Wycinanki, the Polish traditional folk art paper cut-outs.

To see just one of these buildings would be amazing, so all of them plus many more all on one site must truly a marvel to behold.

(All images come from designboom - click on them to see full postings of the pavilions)

Jalkapallo! Football with London's Finnish fans

I went yesterday to watch football with Finnish fans. I returned to the Famous 3 Kings where the fans were gathering to watch their match against Wales.
The bar has several screens, all showing different matches, so it's always pot-luck to find fans.

Happily, when I arrived, I spied a Finnish flag draped across a fireplace. Hurrah! It turned out that 5 Finns were there.

They were surrounded by Welsh fans though. They sat quietly, one brandishing a scarf. During half-time, they took down the flag.

And then the Russians started arriving, as the kick-off to Russia -v- Germany approached. Lots of them. They were in high style, in the best-that-money-can-buy labels. Even the Russian football strip looked like D&G. My picture above just shows the Russians.

It was a veritable Russian invasion.

The Finns, in altogether more sombre and modest outfits, sat their ground, and watched their match.

When Finland scored a goal to take the lead, one man stood up and did a small dance. His friend took the flag and wore it as a bandana.

The Welsh fans started singing and chanting. The Finns stayed sitting, probably thinking "we're actually winning". I hoped they'd respond with a few bars of Hard Rock Hallelujah, but alas no.

In the end, the Finns' quiet resolution paid off. Finland beating Wales 2-1. And for all the Russian cheering, they lost out to Germany.

Jonas Bendiksen - Satellites - photography of unrecognised states

I recently saw Satellites, an exhibition of photography by Jonas Bendiksen at the PM House & Gallery in Ealing.

Satellites is about states that do not actually exist, particularly those in the former Soviet region. When the USSR broke up in the 1990s, 15 'new' countries emerged. However, political and ethnic tensions also led to a number of less well-known and unrecognised states, such as Abkhazia and Transdniester.

Bendiksen spent seven years journeying in these places, culminating in an amazing set of photographs.

I especially liked the photos which showed solitary individual figures set in huge, vast landscapes, like these below. The first shows a little girl (you can barely see her) amongst large Soviet-style buildings. The second shows Tanya, a babooshka, outside large Soviet blocks of flats.

The impression was of these small, unrecognised nations trying to find their way amongst big super-powers and massive international and global structures.




Equally fascinating, and on the same theme, were his images of local people in the area where rockets and spacecraft are crashed in the Kazakh steppe. Locals here pillage the craft for scrap. Again, they seem like solitary people getting by in vast structures.



The exhibition continues until 9 August. Satellites is also available as a book.

Suburbscapes, Seascapes & Snowscapes

I recently saw three interesting exhibitions...

David Rayson - The Everyday Fantastic is at the Marlborough Gallery, showing pen & ink drawings of everyday scenes from suburbia. Many of the scenes are domestic and mundane, with few people. The pen styling gives a scratchy, uncertain feeling to some of the images, like what's real isn't quite there, and a sort of hollow, not fully-filled-in-ness.

I liked this image - Christmas Day - mainly for the little birds on the grass, which I presume are robins, and the foreboding sky above, a real disjuncture from picture-postcard images of Christmas.



My favourite, however, was this image of a lamp, called New Years Eve. It made me think of how our homes are largely hollow, and we make them our own with our things, our stuff... this image is brought beyond a simple line drawing with some simple colour. Although, that lamp has seen better days...




Secondly, I saw Garry Fabian Miller's Time Passage at the James Hyman Gallery. Predominantly featuring darkroom-created photography, I liked these seascape and landscape images. I always enjoy seascapes because they're both abstract and specific - they could be anywhere and everywhere but are always somewhere.







Finally, I saw Sara Haq's landscapes at Alexia Goethe Gallery. Sara travelled overland from London to Phuket, and this exhibition showed snowy, desolate landscapes. I prefered the more abstract images such as these two.

Upstairs, a small installation showed 100 images from Sara's trip which I thought were more interesting than the largescale photographs - you really felt the excitement and wonder and minutaie of such an interesting journey.

Nogomet! Football with London's Slovenian fans

I said the Slovenes were elusive, and they were. Until Saturday noon, I had nothing more than 'go to Sports Bar; hope to see a Slovene'. Then, Mox (great name!) of the London-Slovene facebook and Yahoo! groups came to the rescue with the Famous 3 Kings in West Kensington.

The bar turned out to be full of fans - Russian fans, German fans, French fans, Czech fans, Polish fans, Italian fans, Ukrainian fans, and, yes, Slovene fans!

Many screens showed several matches, with fan groups spread out all over. To begin with, just three were watching the Slovenia game. One bloke on his own. Another bloke on his own. And me. On my own. The atmosphere was not electric.

So I bounced off to watch the Czech-Polish match. The Poles were very excited to be winning. The Czechs all had crazy hair - dreadlocks, long red streaked hair, long hair.

Finally, I saw two Slovenian blokes. It's safe to say they weren't all that interested. One played with his phone, and then looked at the menu. Later, they were chatting animatedly. They even discussed the air conditioning at one point. There were no flags.

Frankly, I don't blame them. It was a boring match. My highlight was seeing a sign saying "Brkini Za Slovenijo" because Slovenijo is an ace word.

When Slovenia scored two flukey goals near the end to win the match, another man celebrated quietly with a smile.

The Russians and Germans were much more excited. The Russians were a mix of trendy types (Dolce & Gabanna hats, coiffed hair) and total hardnuts. The Russians cheered a lot. They even cheered when they lost.

The Germans were giving their "Aus auf Deutschland, something is a doora!" song and the Russians retaliated with "Russ-ki-ja! Russ-ki-ja!". This made up for my not being able to find Russians during Euro 2008.

Later, I stopped off in Piccadilly to take a peek at Kazakh football fans waiting to go into a match after party.

It was £20 to get in, so I gave it a skip. Here's what I (most likely) missed - my favourite Kazakh-pop-tune.

Next up! - I was thinking the Belarussians, but I may have a tip for Norwegians on Wednesday, so it'll probably be them.

Футбольный! Football with London's Russian fans

Oh, those Russians...

The internet wasn't much help in finding London's Russian community - there isn't one, it seems. Lots of Russians live around Kensington and Knightbridge, so I decided to go to a Kensington bar in which a colleague had spied Russian fans last week.

On my way, I saw a woman and girl with a Russian flag. The woman had Russian flags painted on her nails. Brilliant! I, er, followed them for a while, hoping they'd lead to a bar with lots of fans. But, no, they went home.

Then, I saw a girl with a big blue foam hand. Could she be Russian? No, it turned out to be a Wimbledon accessory.

So, I headed to the bar, and found some Spanish, some not-bothered-folk, and 3 Russian blokes. Hurrah for them, my three Russian fans. They didn't have flags, but they did stand for the national anthem.

But then Russia lost.

And, that is that. My odyssey to watch Euro 2008 with foreign fans is complete. I've seen lots along the way - passionate Austrians, nonchalant Swiss, fatalistic Romanians, chatty Greeks, unadorned Turks and patriotic Germans.

But, best of all, they were all Londoners.

Podosfairo! Football with London's Greek fans

Last night I was on Moscow Road to support the Greeks.

Initially, I went to Halepi, suggested by Time Out, but there was no TV. I asked the man in the next door restaurant (Zorba's), and ended up at Cafe Byzantium which had a TV complete with Greek commentary.

I expected the Greeks to be wild, passionate fans, so was surprised to find them all sitting around, drinking coffee and chatting.

Only one chap was wearing football colours. One fashion highlight was a t-shirt emblazoned with a technicolour lobster.

Come half-time, and down 1-0, the Greeks piled outside, had a fag or five, coming back much more animated for the second half, jumping up and getting into a right flap when their off-side goal was disallowed.

• Whenever Greece took a corner or free kick, they stuck their arms out straight ahead of them and wiggled their fingers.
• Greece's number 10 had the look of Apprentice Lee McQueen. I wonder what "that's what I'm talking about" is in Greek?
• The crowd were very excited to see Greek number 8, Stylianos Giannakopoulos - aka Stelios.
• They were laughing and loving the playful homoeroticism of a rough 'n' tumble tackle.
  

They Must Strut!

Some pictures have emerged about the Eurovision stage for Helsinki. This is one of those pictures, thank you oikotimes who took it from YLE / EBU.

It's quite minimal in a Finnish chic way, and this is good.

There is a catwalk, and this is good.

The catwalk is only to be used for the opening and interval acts, and camera-people. Not the performers. And this is bad.

Guri Schanke needs to strut! Scooch need to have the aisle light up in the case of an emergency landing! Edsilia = strutting! Evridiki = strutting! Serebro = coordinated girl band strutting! DQ = strutting! We need the strutting space.

YLE! Rectify this! The Catwalk Campaign starts here. Sign the petition and Save Our Strutting!

EuroRevision: Europe squared.

I want to collect a map for every country in Europe. Get in touch if you want to help.

On conventional world maps, each country is shown with reference to their size.

EuroRevision changes this view by re-positioning each country's map on a 10cm x 10cm piece of paper.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer