Employees at the Fokas Department store sue company over failure to give them seven months back pay. Thessaloniki, Greece.

Employees at the Fokas Department store sue company over failure to pay seven months of wages. Thessaloniki, Greece., a photo by Teacher Dude's BBQ on Flickr.

ACTIVISTA! New issue by Citypulse [teaser]

ACTIVISTA! New issue by Citypulse [teaser] a video by cityfolk on Flickr.

This includes some of my photographs.

"Citypulse ACTIVISTA! issue, dedicated to people who express themselves for a cause."

Artists:
Alessandro Tricarico / Bob France / Clovis Alexandre Desvarieux / Christopher Bevacqua / Craig Wherlock / Jesús Pastor / Jorge Sato / Maggie Osama / Mario Tellez / Michele Lapini / MT Sullivan / Nelson Arancibia / Nelson Pereira / Ontoshiki / Surian Soosay / Tatiana Cardeal / Thorsten Strasas / VC Ferry

Introduction by Ann Marie Simard

Complete digital issue here:
issuu.com/citypulse/docs/activista
order a printed copy here:
magcloud.com/browse/issue/349452

www.citypulser.com

Why I left Demotix

As of last Friday I no longer contribute to the Demotix website. For those who do not know them, Demotix bills itself as an;

"award-winning newswire where YOU tell the stories. We put photos and video from ordinary people and freelance photographers into the international news media."


When I started to upload photographs and news stories I was hoping that the site would be a serious replacement for other citizen journalism news hubs I had previously worked with. I was hoping that unlike these others Demotix would not degenerate into a centre for crack pot ideas and conspiracy theorists desperately trying to convince us that Hitler's brain was living on Mars.

In that respect Demotix has suceeded by retaining editorial control over content and judicious choice of what stories it promotes. So why am I leaving? The first and most obvious reason is the seemingly endless list of technical difficulties that mean uploading photographs (forget video,where problems grew exponentially) and stories can take hours and many repeated attempts.


If you're sitting in the comfort of your own home, an hour of two wasted now and then may not mean much but when uploading  more often or you're outside in difficult conditions, such delays are infuriating.I remember cursing the site with every swear word I possess in both English and Greek when trying to upload a story from the Athens riots which was written on a rapidly dying laptop in an arcade filling up with tear gas.

Despite recent attempts to improve. every upgrade simply changes the nature of the bugs rather than their frequency, it seems. The last straw was on Friday when an entire story just disappeared from before my very eyes never to be seen again. With my main job about to start again I do not have the time to spend two, three hours nursing a story through defective software.

The other problem I have with Demotix is over payment or rather the lack of transparency over what is being sold, where and for how much. By chance I happened to come across some of my images that had been licenced to the Wall Street Journal and some Danish news sites yet no mention was made of this either via my account on Demotix or email. Later a member of the Demotix staff assured me that all the details of these transaction would be made available to me within the following days. That was over a month ago and still no update of my sales has appeared in my account data in Demotix.

As you can imagine this lack of feedback is both disappointing and frustrating and has confirmed my decision that Demotix is not the place for me.

Using images to get your social media message across - a beginner's guide.

I thought I'd post the presentation on using photography in social media on my blog. The talk I gave was divided into sections;

1 - Why use photography?

2 - Basic tips on taking better pictures.

3 - Using image processing programs such as Picasa and GIMP.

4 - Where to put our images on the internet.

5 - Where can you find other peoples's images on the internet (Creative Commons Search)

6 - Legal aspects of taking pictures in public spaces.

7 - Turning still images into video clips.

The idea is to teach beginners all the practical skills necessary to take better pictures using everyday, simple tools such as mobile/cell phones or compact digital cameras and then how to use those images to get their message across in a more effective manner than by just using text.

The seminar takes about three hours and is focused mostly on learning by doing rather than just learning theory. At the end of the session participants will be able to immediately apply what they have learnt in any kind of social media based campaign.

As this is a practical seminar I can only give a general outline of the points covered. To get into more detail then it's necessay for me to do it in person.

Camera updates

As promised I thought I'd let everyone know what has been happening on the camera front. Last week I tipped out my tip jar (which totalled 550 euros and after deducting transfer fees and a tips for the site I was left with just over 500 euros which I sent to my friend, Eleni's bank account. Since I still don't have a passport to replace the one stolen I have no way of retrieving money from my own account.

In the next few days I will use that money along with my own to buy a replacement for the D80 Nikon which I lost. I have come to the conclusion that the best camera would be a Nikon D90. If anyone has any ideas about where I could get one at a reasonable price please let me know.

In addition D H Morton has also given me one of his cameras along with memory cards and a manual. As you can imagine I'm like a kid on Christmas day. It's just the kind of compact camera that I need for situations when having a big DSLR hanging round your neck can be a liability.

As anyone who follows this blog knows the coming months are going to see a lot of upheavals in Greece and hopefully I will be able to record them and give the kind of background to what is happening that a lot of the international media is unable or unwilling to.

Running GIMP on Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger

GIMP is a free alternative to Photoshop and one of the best open source programs on the internet. Usually, I use it on my antiquated Windows laptop but lately I have also been trying to get it to work on my Mac ibook and it has been a very frustrating experience. Finally, today with the help of one of my computer - minded students we finally cracked it. So, hats off to Anna for showing so much patience and in return I have promised to show her how to use GIMP on her Mac.

So, here we go with my own attempt on how to get GIMP to run on Mac OSX 10.4 (Tiger). All the hard work has been done by others on the internet so I'm just collating their efforts so they make sense to less technically minded souls.

1 Download GIMP for OSX 10.4 (if you are not sure what version of OSX you are using click on the blue apple in the top left hand corner and then click on About This Mac). You can find it on
Wilber Loves Apple site. Once again you can find out if you have an Intel or Power PC Mac by clicking on About This Mac.

2 Install Gimp.

3 Unfortunately for reason beyond my ken and pay grade you can't just run GIMP as it is and so you need to install Apple's X11. If you are lucky and/or conscientious then you can find this on you initial Tiger installation disc. Alternatively, go to Chris James Martin's blog here and download the two zip files there.

4 Next open the X11SKD.pkg first and then the X11User.pkg file.

5 Now run GIMP.

Just be warned. The first time I did this GIMP took forever to open. Afterwards it was much quicker though.