A test post trying out a new Twitter app and image hosting idea. Will be cool if it works

As global online writing grows more prominent, as opposed to country-specific traditional print writing, I’m considering the important question of which language to write in. Before you all think I’m incredibly intelligent and multi-lingual, let me just stop you. I’m not. I can speak enough German to avoid being arrested and enough French to buy Mussels and white wine. For Italian, I just wave my arms around a lot.

I’m talking about what George Bernard Shaw called “Two countries separated by a common language.” British English and American English. In particular how it relates to automotive writing for North American readers and British readers. There’s a lot to think about.

There are the obvious things that spring to mind, such as Tyre or Tire, Colour or Color. But these are fairly simple, obvious terms that pale into insignificance when it comes to other aspects, some quite fundamental. America has very different words for many, indeed most, car parts, the roads they drive on and even the act of driving compared to the UK, so if you’re writing for a global audience, what do you do? Should you write in Queens English and accept that American readers will be mildly concerned as they try and figure out what the bonnet is? And why are you putting your luggage into a boot, why not just open the trunk lid?

It's called OVERSTEER you philistine...

Or should you consider the fact that globally, American English is becoming the default setting and that automotive writers should be writing about the hood, not the engine, front fenders, not front wings and driving on pavement, not asphalt? This dilemma becomes even more important when you begin to consider Google and Search Engine Optimisation for your online content.

Here’s some more examples of automotive terms that struggle to make their way across the Atlantic and back again

We British call it understeer. At Laguna Seca, it’s called Push. Same goes for oversteer – loose to the USA driver.
They drive on the Pavement in the USA. You’d get arrested in the UK for that. We call it tarmac, asphalt. Pavement is the sidewalk, guys.
First Steer – a term used to describe those initial short drives. My First Steer was sitting on the lap of my grandfather when I was six years old. We call them First Drives in the UK
Stick Shift – That’s a manual gearbox to the Brits.
Shocks – Shock absorbers. Or dampers preferably.
Coilovers – perhaps not an American phrase, but it bugs me, so it’s on the list. I was always told that it was a McPherson Strut

In short, if you’re writing for a trans-Atlantic, English speaking audience, in my view you have to begin considering American English. It seems that the British are more willing to accept losing the U from color and dotting the I for tyre than the Americans are for trying to figure out how to open the bonnet and the boot.

Right now, I’m authoring a short series of automotive eBooks, so if you have a view on the subject, I’d like to hear it.

However, there’s one term I’m really sad to have to admit that the British have to take responsibility for. Thank you Mr Clarkson for the term Flappy Paddle. May you take it to your grave.

The image of Sir Stirling Moss and the beautiful blonde model continues to generate traffic to my inbox, with quite a few people asking how to buy a print for framing, with the odd request for a shot with Sir Stirling removed, just the model, thank you…

So in response to a demand that I hadn’t actually considered may be there, here’s your chance to own a copy of that image. Printed on metallic photo paper at a generous size of 20″x30″, the prints can be ordered online and shipped globally. This size will also make framing very easy, from a simple WalMart type frame, to something from Ikea or even a custom framing service will all find this dimension simple to cater for. Click this link, or the image below.

Sir Stirling and That Blonde - Now In Print....

PLEASE NOTE. The images you’ll see in the gallery have a watermark on them, but this will not appear in your print. The title text and the border do appear on the image.

Ordering is simple. Just click the thumbnail to display a larger preview, then click ‘licence or buy print’ to add to your shopping cart, then follow the instructions to the checkout. Payment is via a PayPal gateway, but you DO NOT NEED to have a Paypal account to use it, you can simply enter your credit card details and pay online without creating a PayPal account. We can ship to pretty much most countries and you’ll receive your print within around one week if in the USA and two weeks for the rest of the world.

There will be more prints added to the selection based upon my personal favourite images, but if you see an image you’d like to order a print from, let me know and I’ll see if we can arrange it.

So, those of you (and there were a great many) who read my previous post about the Stirling Moss and the Blonde stolen picture may well be wondering what on earth happened after the dust settled. Well here’s the story…

Within hours of the post going live UK time, Jalopnik in the USA were in my inbox with a big apology. My first thoughts were, “Here we go, another cut n paste, boiler plate response”. But no, this was from Jalopnik editor Ray Wert with some interesting info. It seems that Jalopnik know full well how Flickr works. And indeed how copyright and intellectual property works. You see, they’d seen the image on Flickr, with All Rights Reserved on it. And indeed, they contacted the owner of the Flickr image page, believing he had the rights to the image, Ray asked for permission. And it was forthcoming….

Yes, it's my image....

So Jalopnik, quite rightly, thought that they were publishing totally within the law and showcasing what they thought was a great shot, giving credit to the great Mr Galanos. Only, of course unknown to them, they were getting stolen goods.

The second interesting part of the story is that several other photographers contacted me with tales of similar experience with Mr Galanos and his liberal attitude to other people’s work. They also had issues with him and had to contact Flickr to get him pulled into line. So if you’re a photographer, you might like to check out his feed and see if there’s anything there belonging to you.

As for Jalonilk, like me, they seem to be glass half full guys. Editor Ray came up with an offer to run the image again, this time with a fully paid up article from me telling the real story of the picture that day, the bright red 250F Maser, the gorgeous blonde, the sunshine and Sir Stirling.

I’ll drink to that…

Click here to read. Sadly, no..

I’ve written before about how I feel video is so important to any online or interactive publication in 2009 and again in 2010. Still, I wished them well, I was quite taken by the use of cinemagraphs for adding a little movement and expecting to see video soon.

But sadly, it never came. The parent company went into receivership, down went Ferdinand.

EDIT – From what I’m hearing on the grapevine, it seems that Ferdinand was actually ticking along nicely. It was the parent company that ran into difficulties

We’ll probably never know if Ferdinand was a victim or the cause of the failure. But it did bring several things into focus in my mind over a Twitter exchange with Stuart Gallagher, editor of GT Purely Porsche magazine and specialist Porsche dealer Paul Stephens.

Stuart’s view was that Ferdinand needed stronger content, unique content, “not just clones of print mags and they need to appeal to digital consumers” He was quite right, that unique, interactive content was what was missing. Perhaps because they launched without the budget for creating it, hoping that they could wing it until the revenue started? We’ll never know.

However, it does bring into focus several other things. For one thing, do you really need a digital magazine to be successful online? What does a digital magazine bring that a good website doesn’t? What’s wrong with a website? With the massive power of a YouTube channel, for example, driving traffic to a good website, with it’s growing legacy of archived content must surely be a more powerful argument? The success of Pistonheads over the years is testament to the value of a large website archive, plus Chris Harris’ recent series of low rent videos for the Drive channel on YouTube and indeed, car manufacturer’s own successes at creating video channels such as Porsche’s excellent channel, leads me to think that perhaps yet another content delivery platform isn’t really needed.

You need an online magazine Issuu can do that for you. Want to interact on social media? Facebook, Twitter and whatever is coming next can all send you traffic to….. your website.

OK, so an iPad app has two things – the Apple store’s leverage, plus the ability to read offline. but they are small beer these days and with 4G around the corner, that’s a moot point.

Above all, it seems, Ferdinand’s demise has reminded us of one thing. Content is King, followed closely by cashflow. And it remains so. You want to attract readership away from traditional media (and by that, it’s safe to include websites these days) you’re going to have to have compelling content that can’t be seen on YouTube, in printed pages or anywhere else. Publish great content and you’ll generate an audience. Advertisers like an audience and will pay to be around it.

There are some great online Porsche websites and some great Porsche magazines. Ferdinand didn’t get the chance to develop a voice and unless someone steps forwards and picks up the baton, it will just be another website / emag that didn’t quite make it.

An interesting shoot last month via my friends at Ice Driver in Sweden was this newly refurbished hotel. Bruket is based in the hamlet of Mitandersfors, in a mountain area to the west, literally on the border with Norway. Purchased by 2003 World Rally Champion Petter Solberg, the hotel is a traditional log timber building, the type I’m very fond of. It’s refurbishment included the traditional redwood colour exterior and pastel shades inside.

Indeed, were it not for it’s commercial stance, Bruket would probably make a really nice homes and interiors feature at some point. Certainly, this particular part of Sweden is populated with a great many timber homes of considerable age and significance, including some that wee a refuge for the King of Norway and Norwegian resistance fighters during World War Two. There’s a whole raft of ideas for interesting stories in the small area.

The week leading up to departure and we’re constantly checking Weather Pro for the nearest town of Torsby. It’s showing dull, overcast and actually quite warm weather on the Saturday, but hopefully bright blue skies at some point on the Sunday, though even that was changing from hour to hour. Not something we had any control over, we’ll just have to go with the flow. With just two days to undertake the shoot and one of the main criteria being that we got plenty of images of Scandinavian winter time and crisp, blue skies, we were crossing everything we could find.

An easy commute to Manchester Airport and a smoother than usual security clearance, Canon 1DS and associated kit passing acceptance as carry on. Departing via Norwegian Airways for Oslo, we’re taxiing out and there’s an announcement from the flight deck, “We’re number two to depart and you may be interested to hear that the aircraft ahead is an Airbus A380, the largest passenger aircraft in the world” The pilot did well to allow only a slight trace of jet envy into his voice.

Airbus A380 - A trace of Jet Envy?

Sitting in the cruise, I can never resist a wingtip shot once we’re in the piercing sunshine above the clouds. I must have a hard drive’s worth, but nonetheless, the slim Boeing 737 wing with turned up wingtip looks ever so elegant. Not quite so the landing, my companion Jamie Wilson asking “Did we just land there, or get shot down….?”

Gratuitous blue sky and wingtip shot.

Day one was pretty much a write off for shooting outside, the day being dull, flat light and overcast. Day two dawned with much more promise. You can see more of the images from the shoot over on the main portfolio section, the forecast sunshine lasting just three hours before cloud returned, but enough time to get the images we needed, including some local scenes.

Leave your snow scooter parked outside and this is what happens...

The overcast weather allowed time to shoot the interior. The local area has historically been a combination of timber and mining, something that was apparent in the collection of old hand tools on display throughout the buildings.

I love Sweden, the style of design, buildings and the architecture and I’d love to be able to return and shoot more buildings and some more examples of Swedish designs. The combination of traditional homes, some of which date back to the late 1800′s, together with the modern technologies that many have had installed, such as triple glazing, underfloor heating and renewables all make for fascinating architecture.

Russell Bulgin - Ayrton Senna, Rally Driver

In it, Mel tells the timeline of his own career, from a student writer in Tazmania, all the way through to becoming editor of Car magazine and other very well known titles.

It’s around 19 pages of A9, so grab a coffee and read it, as he reminds us of some of the great automotive writers over the last four decades and analyses what it is, or was, that made them so successful. He touches on Jeremy Clarkson’s argumentative style of writing and what inspired him to take that route, plus stories about David E Davis, Steve Cropley and LJK Setright.

As a young student at college in the early 1980′s, I can recall reading many road trip stories and test reports, being inspired by the writing of Car Magazine and Fast Lane. Somewhere in the attic, I have Issue No1 of Fast Lane, complete with oversteering white Porsche 911, THE 911S number plate and an article written either by Tony Dron or a youthful Jonathon Palmer.

Above all, Mel’s paper spells out the single thing that made Car and then Automobile magazine in the USA successful. They didn’t dwell on the statistics and technicalities, rather they put you in the jump seat of a Porsche 911 driving across Europe. In recent years, some magazines seem to have developed a trend towards what I consider a “Me, Me, Me” style of journalism which comes across to the readership as, “Look at me doing skids on Route Napoleon, racing round the ‘Ring…” I don’t think it’s the current financial climate that’s made readers spot this, rather that there’s a difference bewteen ‘Look at me” and “We both enjoyed this, didn’t we?” The right tone of voice, one that puts you there and enjoys every paragraph, is the key difference between readers wanting more and readers being openly critical, as in this Pistonheads thread from last year.

Great automotive writing is memorable forever, almost as if you’d done the trip yourself. Mel Nichols’ Lamborghini delivery drive is one of my favourites:

“It had the unreal quality of a dream. That strange hyper-cleanliness, that dazzling intensity of colour, that haunting feeling of being suspended in time, and even in motion; sitting there with the speedo reading in excess of 160mph and two more gold Lamborghinis drifting along ahead. Not even those gloriously surreal driving scenes from Claude Lelouche’s film A Man And A Woman were like this: that grey, almost white ribbon of motorway stretching on until it disappeared into the sharp, clear blue of a Sunday morning in France, mid-autumn, and those strange dramatic shapes eating it up. What a sight from the slower cars as that trio came and went! What a sight from the bridges and the service areas: witnesses there would have seen the speed! So would the police, of course, those same gendarmes who one after another apparently chose to look and drink it in, to savour it as an occasion rather than to act.”

Indeed Clarkson rates it as the best ever drive story.

And perhaps my two joint favourites of all time are the late Russell Bulgin’s Ayrton Senna, Rally Driver and Denis Jenkinson’s recount of the ’55 Mille Miglia alongside Stirling Moss. Fifty years later, it still grips you.

Nichols’ presentation is a great read, reminding everyone of some of the great motoring writers of the last five decades. This is the download page, the PDF is on the right hand sidebar. Or, you can download the PDF directly here.

Back in 2008, there was controversy on Teesside when a selection of ex-US Navy warships arrived for disposal. Controversy due to the fact that while they were bringing work to the area, they also brought along a significant amount of Asbestos as part of their structure. This shot is what I call a ‘target of opportunity’. Not a planned shot, just grabbed in the process of shooting another client’s project.

Ghost ships - Ex- US Navy ships awaiting dismantling on Teesside.

These types of shots often present themselves when positioning for a shot, whether flying fixed wing or helicopter, so it always pays to have the camera wide awake and ready to shoot. I’ve not flown over that location in a while, so not sure what’s left now. For those interested in the technical details, shot on the Canon EOS 1DS, with 70-200 f2.8IS telephoto.

As for the ships, as far as I know, the company eventually got permission for the work from the local authorities and they were broken apart and disposed of.

Sorting through some recce shots for some house and property features, I stumbled across this shot. Taken in Sweden a couple of years ago on a recce for a project that didn’t progress, it’s an odd looking object.

Guess The Object?

But what is it? It was free standing, situated in the central hallway / staircase area of an old Sweden house, formerly the residence of a timber mill foreman. Despite being made from timber in the traditional Swedish style, the house dates back to the 1800′s. I love the feel of traditional log and timber homes, the have a natural warmth in winter that I find relaxing, yet are always light and cool in summer. It’s also surprising for someone from the UK living in brick built homes, just how old many traditional timber homes are in Scandinavia.

Back to the object. It’s old – probably as old as the house itself as it’s also very heavy and highly unlikely to be the type of thing you’d slide in through a side door. If you know what it is, add your comment in the box below, I’ll give a full description of it in a while, depending on who gets it right.

Just a very brief post to share this with you. This is a beautiful, short and thought provoking commercial. Far too often, road safety commercials are dictatorial and accusing. This one by TV commercial director Roni Kliener makes the point very well.

Glassboy from roni kleiner on Vimeo.