Google Earth is a source of endless fun.  Here, for instance, is a famously spectacular image, suitably flattened to fit in here:

That’s a slice of the first of these, which I found via here.

I have been making ever more use of Google Earth in my explorations of London.  It can’t tell you much about where you can go, but it is great at telling you where you went.

So, for example, I recently managed to get into this huge expanse of almost complete nothingness, surrounded by photo-ops on all sides, which is to the south of the Royal Victoria Docks:

I’m talking about the big grey slab there, and the more vegetated area between the grey slab and the river, where the ground rises, to keep the river in check presumably.  If you want to find that for yourself on Google Earth, type in “west silvertown tube station”, which is to the top right of that vast expanse.

At the extreme westerly point of the ground I covered, I found a nesting goose, and took a photo of her.  Mrs Goose is on the left:

At which point Mr Goose showed up, and drove me away.  He looks happy enough there, on the right, but that’s because by then I had retreated.  A real photographer would have advanced again, made him angry again, and got a shot of him being angry, while very slightly risking death, again.  I only wished I had done that when I got home.

Last night I journeyed forth with my camera, and eventually found my way to Stratford, near where the Olympics is being rushed into existence.  The tallest and most visible Olympic Thing is the Big Thing already featured in an earlier snap here, last Sunday.  That tested my new superzooming superpower to the max.  This time I got closer:

You can also see the big stadium there.

I’m still not sure what the point of this Big Thing is, but I think I quite like it.  I certainly like photographing it.  I wish Paris had got the damn Olympics, but if London does have to accommodate these idiot contests, we’ll at least have a Big Thing to show for it all.  But why couldn’t they just have bought the Big Thing, and skipped the Olympic bit?

Perhaps the point of this Big Thing is to communicate the struggle involved in being an Olympic athlete.  I really don’t know.  Meanwhile, it communicates the struggle involved in getting the damn Olympics ready in time.

When I am very old, and immobile, I will still be a photoblogger, posting pictures that I took one, two, five, ten, even twenty years ago.  I won’t be frustrated by not getting out any more.  On the contrary, it will be my chance to catch up, and with photos that are all the more fun for being of stuff which is now often quite different.

Photos like this one:

What I love about that is that it looks like it’s been Photoshopped with some sepiation trick, but it is actually real.  As is demonstrated by the red advert middle left.

It’s the Shard, again, by which I am currently fascinated, as are many other Londoners-with-cameras I believe.  But don’t you just love, also, those almost biological creepy crawlies in the foreground, between the train lines?  The thing is, it takes me a while to realise how good a snap like that is.

This is the same DLR railway line from which I also took this snap, also involving the Shard, and also involving other things - in that case another Big Thing.

By the way, saying that’s a great photo doesn’t feel to me like boasting.  The real geniuses of such things are not me or my fellow snappers.  They are the techies who put the toys in our hands, that enable us to make such magic, just by going … click.

Here.

For some time now I’ve been missing this blog, and the chance it gives me to put up thoughts and photos that will go nowhere else.  And now feels like a good day to resume here.  I don’t know how often I will be posting over the coming months, but more than during the last two months is the overwhelmingly likely state.

The mere clocks changing shouldn’t affect reality, but it does.  For one thing, the evening rush hour is over one hour earlier, and the evening, just after that rush hour, is a very good time to be out photoing.

Yesterday, for instance, just before it got too dark, I photoed this:

You think it a bit dim and blurry?  For me, that’s a big part of the point.

I was beside an elevated road going north/south between the Dock and the river, looking north.  In the background there: this.  Maybe one day soon I will have something wise and Samizdata-ish to say about this Big Olympic Thing, on Samizdata.  Meanwhile, here it is, here.

I was trying to photo the new Ski Lift Thing they are now nearly finishing, which will take digital photographers, and people, over the river between the Dome and the Royal Victoria Docks.  I did take some snaps of that, but when I got home and looked at what I had, the above image seemed like the most intriguing one I had.

I have a new camera.  My thoughts about it here, i.e. there.  As is explained there, this new camera means I’m now cranking out many more decent photos, which I think intensifies the need for this blog to stay up and running.