I’ve been thinking about different ways to present my pictures on this blog recently.  When I first started posting I would upload quite a few pictures to each post, but that would take quite a while – my internet speed is pretty slow so uploads take a while.  Then I started to use slideshows created at slide.com.  I like being able to show a lot of pictures without taking up much space (or time), however I think the slide.com slideshows are a bit limited.  Unfortunately these are the only slideshows that seem to work with wordpress.

So I’ve decided to try out something new – creating my own video slideshows.  I’ve started by creating two from recent posts – the Strangers into Citizens protest and the London Marathon.  I think overall i’m quite happy with the way they’ve come out, especially the protest one.  But if you have any thoughts any feedback i’d love to hear it.  The only thing i’m not overly happy with is the way it deals with portrait photos, it works much better with landscape.

At the moment these videos will just be glorified slideshows, but hopefully I will start to incorporate video footage.  At the end of the month i’m planning to upgrade my camera.  While I would love to get the Canon 5D MkII, I just can’t afford it.  So I think i’m looking at the new Canon 500D, which comes with HD video capability.  So hopefully in just a few weeks I’ll be trying out some video.

At about 12.30 today Major Phil Packer finished the London Marathon two weeks after starting, might not sound particularly impressive until you learn that nearly 18 months ago Maj Packer was involved in an incident in Afghanistan and lost the use of both of his legs and was told by his doctors that he would never walk again.  But he didn’t let that stop him.  So for the last thirteen days he has been walking 2 miles a day to complete the Marathon and raise money for the Help for Heroes campaign.

He’s hoping to raise a total of £1,000,000 by running the marathon.  At the moment he’s raised just over £700,000 and hopefully with all the additional media coverage he receives today he’ll soon reach his target.  If you want to support the campaign go to www.philpacker.com to make a donation.

So this week I decided to try and photograph the 2009 Flora London Marathon, turned out to be much more difficult that I thought it would be.  Firstly a lot of the places I wanted to photograph from were either blocked off to credentialed press or for “safety” reasons.  So unfortuately I didn’t come away with some of the shots I’d hoped for, in particular I didn’t get much at the end of the race, it was just a nightmare down there!

But saying that I’m quite pleased with the results, especially as I have little experience of sports photography.  One other thing I should have remembered was sun cream!  It was pretty hot out today and I ended up catching the sun a bit.  Got to give a lot of credit to the runners, I’m shattered after just having walked a lot today, no idea how they can run 26 miles!!