Daily Inspiration #343 by Scott Wylie

Hi Steve,

I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while and find it really interesting, I like the informal and honest way in which you write as well as the guest posts that are invited from all over the world.

I’ve been taking pictures for about 30 years, starting with a Kodak Instamatic 126 when at eight years old (with the little square flash cubes that plug in on top) followed by a Ricoh KR-10M 35mm and then the Sony F717 and some DSLRs. I have always preferred compact cameras but it’s really only in the last couple of years that I’ve found the image quality to be satisfactory. I bought the Sony RX100 a few weeks ago and it has really blown me away – I can wander around all day with this tiny featherweight and yet produce really great quality images. I felt that this would be well matched by an equally portable storage and processing system so I bought an iPad and installed SnapSeed, PhotoToaster and Filterstorm Pro.

I decided to try out this combination in London last Saturday. As you know we have the Olympic games here at the moment but getting around was actually no different than usual and there’s a great atmosphere as team Gb are doing really well!

If I had to describe the city in a single word it would be ‘dramatic’. The light is always changing, it’s a great place for street photography because people pretty much just ignore photographers, and there are loads of fascinating classical and modern buildings. But there are also a lot great locations for really dramatic pictures that are much less obvious – the sculptures in the V&A, Westminster Cathedral (not to be confused with the Abbey) with its black ceiling and marble walls inlaid with huge gold artwork, The Victorian garden cemeteries at Kensal Green, Highgate and Brompton which are full of huge mausoleums. Then there’s the gigantic and derelict Battersea power station which is well-known to Pink Floyd fans – it’s the largest brick building in Europe and was designed by the same architect as the red phone boxes. Getting around is easy as £7.70 will buy a day travelcard that covers the whole tube (metro) and bus system. Most museums and other interesting buildings are free to enter.

The pictures I’ve sent you here are from the V&A museum of childhood in Bethnal Green which houses a collection of frankly very creepy dolls along with various toys such as Scalextric and old video games. Like most places in London, if you look hard enough there are always unusual photographs waiting to be taken… I processed them using SnapSeed which is a really great program and capable of excellent results.

Many thanks for taking the time to read my email, and for your excellent blog.

Scott Wylie http://www.flickr.com/photos/scotbot/

14 Comments

  1. Snapseed rules. I’ve copied dozen of my street photos to ipad and took it with me while traveling. The results I achieved was not much worse than results I could get from lightroom. There is another great app Camera+, I like it’s “ansel adams” bw preset for street photography. Here are some examples, taken with ipad and processed with camera+
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/8226413@N03/7446319158/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/8226413@N03/7426858112/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/8226413@N03/7456780530/

    P.S. To be honest, I expected some street photos from London. You can share them in comments. I think all readers are willing to see them.

  2. Creepy images! :-p

    Another Snapseed fan here. The only thing missing is to not be able to add watermark on the images.

  3. I’m very interested in the little RX100 and the IQ it can produce seems fine for my needs (prints not larger then A3+) but I would be grateful if someone could tell me how it stands against the Fuji X10 in terms of dynamic range.
    Compliments for the shots, I agree with you that a compact camera plus an IPad makes a very convenient and light combo.

  4. Thanks Scott. I just moved to Bethnal Green from Sydney, Australia about a month ago. Will definitely have to go down to the museum to check it out.

  5. Interesting read and scary but great photos. (would have enjoyed to see some more from London though).

    SnapSeed is no doubt great as it uses Nik’s control point (U Point) technology which makes it possible to adjust specifc areas of an image very easily. Same technology in Capture NX2 which I use – it’s just a breeze to make corrections.

    Congratulations with the RX100, it is just an amazing camera for the size.

  6. Thank you for sharing. I’m going to have nightmares now, probably need therapy. The RX100 definitely rocks though for a point and shoot.

  7. Thanks for the post … interesting. I would like to know more of your conclusions on using “SnapSeed, PhotoToaster and Filterstorm Pro” with your iPad. I have not heard of these, and whilst I can research them, your thoughts as a user would be nice. Best wishes.

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