Forum Topic

Nice skies over East Putney this evening ...

... the Moon and Venus with red cloud background from sunset 29 Mar 20https://flic.kr/p/2iJY4RX

Michael Ixer ● 2417d10 Comments

Looks like you’re in direct communication with both the Venusians and the man in the moon. Is there something you need to tell us?

Freddie Francis ● 2417d

Fabulous photograph, as always!  Really lovely, thank you.

Ivonne Holliday ● 2417d

Thanks, Ivonne.Freddie, I did wonder about cropping the image but I thought the neighbour's satellite dish added a sort of perspective to it. If I'd have dug out my DSLR I might have got a technically better picture but probably would have missed the opportunity. As an ex-colleague of mine used to say: the best camera you have is the one you've got with you. It's interesting what one can do with a smartphone; yesterday I was scanning some photos from the early 90s taken in Greece,. I was using a film for sunny weather, 100 ASA, so some pictures taken in a cave in the Mani came out rather blurred and dingy but as a friend said they were rather evocative and surreal compared with the clinical results I might have got with an auto digital camera 🙂https://flic.kr/s/aHsmMgT5FZ

Michael Ixer ● 2417d

Meant to add a couple of scanned photos from the same or an adjacent roll for comparison ...https://flic.kr/p/2iKbdd7https://flic.kr/p/2iKbhxz

Michael Ixer ● 2417d

Only joking. No criticism of the photo whatsoever. The satellite dish lends perspective.

Freddie Francis ● 2417d

Thanks Freddie.  Happy to have feedback - think you've posted some good pics I've past? To be honest, I was just generating discussion on something other than COVID-19  or politics... 🙂

Michael Ixer ● 2417d

It should be encouraged. Despite Ms Hammond's irrational disdain for Facebook (see Dom Cummings post) it's a great place to share photos on a world wide scale. I'm using the lockdown to post a lot of New York images Ive taken over the years to a New York tourism group and getting over 100 likes each time and more importantly starting conversations and reigniting links with lost neighbours. Doing the same on groups linked to where I was born. Fantastic to be able to talk about stuff in no way connected to what's going on. I'm still using the old version of the site so image posting's not easy but if everyone posted a random picture everyday it  would lighten this group up no end.

Freddie Francis ● 2417d

Freddie, like all technology products and services Facebook can have good and bad aspects. I find it great for keeping in touch with friends ranging from New Zealand to California but, yes, there's also lots of fake information and scams around on it - one just needs to learn what to ignore on FB! The data use by Cambridge Analytica was a blot on FB's record, let's hope the EU's GDPR and California's CCPA data privacy legislation will tame the worst excesses of all big data harvesters. Again, big data is something that can be used for good things, such as medical developments, as well as bad things like unnecessary, covert surveillance ...I'm minded to set up a random picture topic - and some of my pics seem pretty random when I look back on them ...

Michael Ixer ● 2417d

You're absolutely right about the negatives but if you join closed groups there's less rubbish and people are generally more pleasant. Each platform has it's issues. The key is to be vigilant and learn how to spot the scammers are fake news merchants. If one can't then best to stay away. You can get a blocker for the Facebook tracking so there's at least one way to cut down on unwanted targeted advertising and monitoring. Great hedgehog photo!

Freddie Francis ● 2416d

For me the best thing about the skies right now is no planes

Elizabeth Balsom ● 2416d