Update: You can now see even more photos from the Google car cam here: The rare beauty found within google street view 2

Other than design, I have always been extremely interested in world history. When looking for anything historical on the web, I found every site I visited to be a bad experience, nothing inspired me to read more deeply into a whole history of a war, a battle or historical event. With this in mind I contacted a friend, Phil Ricketts, with my idea and he instantly said yes.

I would like to bring history on the web into the 21st Century by making historical events such as World War II into an experience and not only a list of historical dates and figures.

By using the latest web technologies we can do pretty much anything on the web so Phil and I are launching an educational World War II website on November the 11th (just before Remembrance Day) called Remember the War. I am also currently looking into having the site featured on some blogs and hopefully even a few newspapers around November the 11th. We hope by featuring the site in certain papers and blogs it will go viral and hopefully spread worldwide.

We have already been offered hosting from several very generous companies which we are now testing. What we do need now however is a little money to help us purchase the photographs used throughout our sites experience. This is where we need your help. Me and Phil are self employed and haven’t the funds to purchase the quality photography required for the standard of experience we are aiming for.

What we are looking for now is some financial sponsorship. If you wish to donate a smaller amount we accept donations from £10 which will get your name and link credited on the Remember The War Sponsor page. Alternatively if you wish to donate a larger amount of £100+ we will make you a featured Sponsor of Remember the War on the sites front page including a logo.

The amount we are looking to raise in the next few days is £1000, this will buy us the photography we need for two years.

I hope you can see the potential in our project as much as we can. If you would like to get involved and sponsor Remember the War please get in touch with me and Phil at: hello@rememberthewar.com. Or you can donate direct from Remember the War.

Any surplus money made beyond our target amount will be donated to the charity Help for Heroes.

Below I have a little sneak peak of the design, I don’t want to give away too much right now but if you are interested in sponsoring us I would be willing to show you more.

Select the main focus

Duplicate the photograph layer and by using your favored selection tool  or as I have done it below carefully erase  around the portion of the image which will not have motion blur.

Cloning the background

On the orignal background using the ‘Clone Stamp Tool’  clone away a portion of the subject all around its edges. Don’t worry about being too neat as the rest of the process will obscure it. This will ensure that portions of the subject don’t bleed into the background when the motion blur is applied.

Time to apply the motion blur

{FILTER > BLUR > MOTION BLUR}

I used a setting of 0′ angle and 60 pixels in length for this photograph have a play to see what looks best for your photograph.

Add motion blur

Now make visible your hidden subject back on top of the blurred background.

 Touching up the transition area

Merge your background and focus layers and touch up the area between the subject and the blurred background with the blur tool . This will help reduce the sharpness of the transition.

Photo by Guerito

Big thanks everyone who entered our photo manipulation competition it was in the end a close run thing with Chantelle Barnard-Ranch coming in second with 30 votes and Damian Hughes winning with his Medieval castle entry with 31 votes.

Chantelle Barnard-Rance

Original Photograph

1. Jadah Williams

2. Naomi Kent

3. Leigh Hoyte

4. Michael Leeson

5. Joy Fortuna

6. Damian Hughes

7. Chantelle Barnard-Rance

8. Phil South

9. Emma Carr

10. James Gregory

Each website or application I used seemed to just build on my hatred towards all online task management systems.  Eventually I’d had enough, so came up with a solution for managing tasks that is best for the way I work. It’s not a fancy website or application that requires to signup and pay yet another subscription fee, instead it goes back to basics; a whiteboard and some post-it notes.

It is true what they say ‘out of sight is out of mind’. I needed something that was visually available 24/7,  so I purchased a cheap whiteboard just big enough to fit on the wall right next to my desk where it couldn’t be missed. The board is split into four sections; Backburner, To Do, Actions and Payments and use different coloured post-it notes for the various types of action, foe example Blue: Client task, Yellow: Personal task, Pink: Notes or Shopping Orders, Green: Meetings & Events.

Backburner: For  tasks awaiting quote confirmation or personal projects and tasks that are your least important.

To do: Tasks that are next in line for me to complete

Actions: My current actions, my tasks for the day ahead. Be it a design task or a meeting at 4pm in London they all go into my actions for the day.

Payments: Last of all payments, once I have completed a task I move it over to payments with a completion date written on the post-it. Ready for my invoice to be sent out.

This visual task system may not be for everyone but it has helped improve my day to day productivity since working for myself, as I am reminded to update it daily unlike all the online task systems I have not enjoyed using.

Luca Pierro

Kevin Schere

Erik Johansson

Richard Angus leonard

Peter Cakovsky

Jeanyves Lemoigne - *Fordoing favourite of the week*

Brett Sargeant

The easy bit is taking the photos for your customers, this is the part that has driven you to go freelance. The difficult bit? Getting the photos to your customers in the quickest most efficient method possible. Here’s how I do it.

After packing up my kit and saying goodbye to my clients, I head straight home to get the RAW images off the CF card and onto my Laptop. Adobe Lightroom 3 has been set up to open it’s excellent import function as soon as a card is inserted to my card reader. I always shoot RAW – it’s the best way to ensure perfect results every time and makes editing loads easier.

All images are selected by default, all I have to do is choose a destination. I have a generic Photography folder sorted into categories depending on equipment used, which is nearly always my Nikon D700. Under here there are sub-folders categorised by shoot type, these include People, Product, Family and Wedding. Under each folder I have a sub-folder for the client. In the example below you can see it’s Photography > D700 > People > Ami. Once my destination is chosen, I then click Import and sit back whilst the photos are copied.

Once imported, Lightroom is open and showing my images in a quick collection. However, I always browse to the folder I’ve imported them into in the Folders section. Here comes the bit where you revel in how amazing your work is. I create a new Collection, then select all the good images from the shoot and add them to that Collection. Again, the Collections are sorted into People, Family etc… Then into client name. These ones go into Collection > People > Ami.

Now for some developing and editing. This is entirely up to you, and everyone wants something different. For a ‘typical’ customer I end up adjusting the white balance. I usually shoot with a white background, which means it’s easy to use the WB tool to select a white part of the image, adjust the exposure, reduce some clarity and increase a bit of vibrance. The other important development setting which is vital to me is Camera Calibration. My Nikon D700 is configured to shoot in Vivid mode. So I make sure this is changed to match my camera settings. I then crop the images to make them suitable for the customer.

Now I’ve edited all the images it’s time to get rid of some of the imperfections in Photoshop. By right clicking on the image I select to edit in Adobe Photoshop CS5. Some clients ask me to get rid of spots, some want it natural, it’s all up to them. Every image I want the customer to have is opened in Photoshop, mostly just to touch up the background. This image is then saved as a .psd file in the same location as the original image.

Here’s a before and after of an edited RAW image.

I’m now ready to export the images for the customer. Making sure I’m in Library view, I sort the images by File Extension. This then makes it easier to see the psd files from the RAW images. I select all the psd files, and click on Export. I’d highly recommend setting some presets in here. I’ve got some for Facebook exports which aren’t such high quality, and a preset for Full JPG’s, which is what I send to my customers. I export the images to a Customer Exports directory in a folder for that particular customer. Images aren’t renamed as it makes it easier to refer to original file name when referring to them with customers. I set them to JPEG format, with Quality set to 100.

I check through the exported images just to make sure they’re OK. Once checked, they’re then put onto a CD. As a nice touch, and to make things a little more special, I create a nice CD cover using exPressit software and CD labels. I pick an exported image and make it look pretty. The end result for my clients looks something like this.

Slightly cheesy, but I love it. This CD is then packaged with an invoice and letter saying my clients can get the images reproduced in any format, then posted or personally delivered.

This is just my workflow, but I hope it helps some of you reduce your production time, and increase your time behind the camera. I’d love to hear about your workflows too.

I decided to browse around the internet for more abandoned theme park photography to see what discoveries I would make. I was surprised at the amount there actually was! As you’ll see below, the photography I found is quite post apocalyptic.

Six Flags New Orleans – photos by smwarnke4 & Liquorhead

Since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 Six Flags has been left slowly rotting, decaying, and sinking into the swamp-land it was built on just outside of the city.

Okpo Land, South Korea – photos by Streetbeat85

Okpo is located on a little South Korean Island called Geoje Island. In 1999 Okpo Land was shut down because os a series of accidents. After the second fatal accident where a young girl was killed after she was thrown from a ride, the park was shut down. Below you can still see the derailed car from which the little girl was thrown, very sad indeed.

Chippewa Lake, Medina County - photos by history_buff_23

Chippewa Lake park is hidden on a lakeshore in Medina County. What you find today is the tragic shell of a once glorious family fun park. It has become totally overgrown with trees growing around and in-between the old amusements. It operated from 1878 through 1978, after the final owner, Continental Business Enterprises closed it due to lack of attendance. After the park’s closure, its rides and structures were left largely untouched and unmaintained for the next 31 years. The movie ‘Closed for the Season’ Shot scenes here in 2010 so I’ll have to rent myself a copy of that to watch.

Nara Dreamland, Japan – photos by girlonawire

Nara Dreamland was a theme park near Nara in Japan built in 1961 and closed permanently in 2006. The entrance to the Nara dreamland park was designed to look almost identical to Disneyland, including the Train depot, a Main Street, U.S.A. and the familiar Sleeping Beauty Castle at the hub.

Spreepark, Berlin – photos by Sebastian Niedlich

Spreepark was an amusement park in the Berlin district Treptow-Köpenick formerly part of the GDR-controlled East Berlin. It was well-known also under its earlier name Kulturpark Plänterwald.

Since 1999 the park had to cope with large debts. They increased the admission fee to 30 DM per person and a lack of parking space contributed to a drop in visitor numbers until in 2001 only 400,000 visitors entered the park and it was closed down.

If you have visited and photographed any abandoned theme parks recently be sure to contact me to be featured in future posts.