Over the past few weeks, I've made a considerable number of updates to this website. Most of it was behind the scenes, cleaning up and rationalising code, but I have introduced some visual updates. The photography main page now has less text and more photos. The text has been moved off to a new "Info & Contact" sub-page. The photos on the main page are taken from 4 searches:

• A random selection from the full gallery
• A random selection from the last 16 to be added
• A random selection from 16 of my personal favourites
• And a random selection from the 16 most popular - most viewed - photos on the site

Unfortunately, I didn't notice that I'd inadvertently broken the mechanism that counts accesses, which has been running for about 6 weeks. Except that it the last two weeks, it was stuck at 2806... I've tried to make the gallery list a bit more obvious too. I hope it all works for you - please let me know, or leave a comment here, if any seems broken, or it just doesn't make sense. I'd really appreciate it.

I received a message yesterday about The Canary Project, a photo-based campaign trying to alert people to the realities of global warming. It seems a pretty admirable initiative to me. I strongly recommend you take a look. I'll let the message speak for itself:

The Canary Project is an effort by photographer Susannah Sayler and a team of researchers, writers and designers to gather images of global warming and display those images in ways that bring them to the attention of the widest possible audience. You can see examples of the work and learn more about them here: www.canary-project.org During the month of July, Canary Project images will be on the sides of buses in Denver as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art's "Creative Acts That Matter" exhibit. You can see more of the Project's work and some of the bus images here:

I hope the buses are using low emission power 😊 Anyway, please pass on the message. This is important stuff.

Like any place in a state of transition, Romania is a fascinating place. On the verge of EU membership, still recovering from the ravages of a megalomaniac dictator, with almost vanished memories of a brief prosperity, and with reminders in the most unlikely places of turn of the (19th) century elegance, this is a country which takes more than a while to get to grips with. Romania is an isolated Latin outpost, surrounded by Slavs and Balkans. Although claims of being the closest thing to a living relict of the Roman Empire are a bit far-fetched, it is certainly the case that the Romanian language is closer to Latin than is modern Italian. Culturally however Romania shows a closer proximity to France than to Italy. So all in all a very rich blend, with a very strong identity.

Part of the Cantacuzino Palace (George Enescu museum)

Photographically speaking Romania is a treasure trove. Recently I had the opportunity to spend a few hours wandering around the centre of Bucharest, a city of many layers and many contrasts. In the early 1900s, Bucharest emulated and rivaled Paris. Buildings of all sizes, from palaces to family homes, show a strong Art Nouveau influence, although most are in a poor state of repair. Following the Second World War, Romania fell under the Soviet influence, and was severely punished for supporting Hitler's Germany. A period of Stalinisation followed, and the periphery of Bucharest, as well as most parts of Romania, is dominated by Soviet-style tower blocks.

A typical unreconstructed tower block facade

Later, in the earlier period of Ceausecu's dominion, things were considerably more relaxed, and Romania was verging on non-aligned status. Unfortunately, towards the 1980s Ceausecu fell under Chinese influence and basically went mad. Vast swathes of Romanian countryside were collectivised, and large parts of historic Bucharest were demolished to make way for his megalomaniac plans to build a communist megapolis. Following the somewhat fabricated revolution in 1989, the country become a happy hunting ground for home-grown and foreign mafiosi (collectively known as the "Romanian government"), with the resulting creation of a small number of ultra-rich and a large number of very poor. In 2006, things seem to be improving, slowly, although it is extremely debatable how beneficial EU membership will be to the non-elite.

The inevitable face of progress

There are layers, upon layers, upon layers in Bucharest. The country style houses of Sector 1, the restored palatial villas in the diplomatic areas, Ceausescu's civic center, remnants of communist-era shopfronts, elegant arcades, leafy, friendly parks, all mingling in with decaying communist tower blocks, and ultra-modern glass and concrete edifices. Every corner hides a surprise, for example a busy market full of the sort of fruit and vegetables that seem too tasty, too good, and especially far too cheap, to exist in Europe in 2006.

Europe, from the market

Even the civic centre, with the unbelievable Casa Poporului (House of the People) as its focal point, starts to become acceptable, attractive even, with the numerous fountains restored to full working order, and the wide sidewalks line with leafy trees. The neoclassical Athenaeum is genuinely beautiful. Photographic opportunities are everywhere, and tourists are still thin on the ground. People are, by and large, extremely friendly and warm, although there are some aggressive beggars around. However, the number of hustlers and touts seems to have reduced a lot over the past few years.

New use for old Style

Bucharest is changing very fast. Time will tell what happens next, if it retains its quirky identity or becomes a Eurostandard metropolis, but either way this period of transition will not last. No visit to Romania should end with Bucharest - you could spend years exploring this wonderful country - but it is a good place to start.

Exchange. For better or for worse ?

Sometime in the mid 1970s, I believe, Henri Cartier Bresson visited Romania. I've only ever found two photographs of this period, this one, of a couple sleeping on a CFR train, which was published in "De qui s'agit'il ?" - - and this one, of Bucovina, which I think is from "Les Europeens" If anybody reading this knows of any others, I'd be very interested to hear of them. It is interesting, first because there is very little foreign photography of Romania of this period, at least that I know of, and secondly, because it was very late in HCB's active photographic career. Cristian Paul, writing from Bucharest, published a brief mention of the CFR photo on his kit.blog, but that's all I can find.

Many, many years ago I was lucky enough to be paid to go to Antarctica, twice in fact. With hindsight, it is a pity that I wasn't just a touch better at photography at the time (not to mention science, but that's another story). I took many, many photographs, with a combination of borrowed Canon FT bodies and a ramshackle collection of lenses – some actually extremely good, although I didn't know it at the time – and an Olympus XA compact. At least I followed the sound advice to use Kodachrome, not negative film, although the downside to that is that badly stored Kodachrome deteriorates over time. And I seem to have been better at keeping horizons level in those days.

Yours truly posing in front of MV Aurora, somewhere near Brunt Ice Shelf, early 1992

So, inspired by recent photos of Antarctica shown at the Luminous Landscape, I decided to have one final (?) attempt at salvaging something from the archives using the latest and greatest tools at my disposal. In my defence, photography was not the aim of my journeys, and my motivation for it was purely to have mementoes and photos to show to family and friends. Others took it far more seriously. Actually, it is rather ironic that I was "trapped" at Damoy Point for over 4 weeks (I expected to be there two days), an absolute paradise for photography. Many of my colleagues were very jealous, but I couldn't understand why. I just wanted to get out! This revised set has replaced the Antarctica archive I had online previously. Many of the photos are the same, but all have been scanned at the highest possible resolution in Silverfast Ai Pro, with a diffuser, then been cleaned up in Photoshop, with noise reduction using Noise Ninja, vignetting reduced using Photoshop's new lens correction filter, and colour correction using PixelGenius Photokit Color, in particular the excellent grey balancers. Apart from these, I carried out various manual corrections and enhancements where necessary. A few I decided work better in black & white.

Me (left), Jeff Ridley (right) and one of the GLACE pilots who's name I'm afraid I've forgotten, in front of the GLACE Twin Otter (there are few hairdressers in Antarctica)

The results are probably about the best I can achieve, so I should draw a line under this stuff now. I might add a few more over the coming weeks – I still have my second level archive to reconsider – but 38 keepers isn't a bad score, all things considered. You can see them in the Antarctica gallery. You can read more on my experiences in Antarctica in an article I wrote some time back.