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This weeks PhotoFriday, “The Street,” was one where, unusually, I had quite a few options that I was happy with. In the end I figured that it had to be somewhere where pretty much all of life happens on the street. There were a few images taken in Vietnam that came close, but I like this one in Havana, Cuba, because everyone was completely oblivious to my presence; life goes on even when there are nosey tourists with cameras.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Photoshop Skills.” I’m entry number 167.

I nearly didn’t take part in this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, “Photoshop Skills,” as I’m not a big Photoshop user. I tend to tweak images, enhance the colours, maybe a little dodging and burning, but nothing that would show my Photoshop skills — the whole point of my edits are normally that you can’t see them!

Then I remembered that I’ve spent quite a lot of time over the years trying to make the perfect panorama. The above image, taken in Siena, Italy, is perhaps the best that I’ve managed. (I’ve used a variant of this one before for PhotoFriday.)

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks PhotoFriday challenge, “Best Friend.” I’m entry number 173.

For the past few weeks I have spent almost as much time in Switzerland as I have at home. Unfortunately with business trips you can never guarantee that you see anything more of the place than the airport, and office and a hotel¹.

Fortunately I did finish “early” a couple of days though and the weather did manage to cooperate.

My first time in the city I arrived at the office in a taxi and walked five minutes to the hotel. Dinner wasn’t far away either. I had no impression of the orientation or size of the place. Well known for being next to a lake, I couldn’t have told you which direction to find it.

It turns out that it’s a very pretty, small city. When I did figure out the lay of the land I realised that nothing was very far away even on foot.

On the last day I went to Zeughauskeller for dinner.

Perhaps not the healthiest of options but, I am told, traditionally Swiss. (The yellow stuff on the right is called Rösti, basically a potato pancake.) A pretty good way to round out my three weeks in the city.

1. Since this was a business trip I didn’t have my regular camera with me and I had to shoot with my iPhone 4. It is surprisingly good for a phone but a long way from even my old “proper” camera in terms of image quality. [↩]

If you’re seeing any pictures missing from ZX81.org.uk at the moment this is because of a glitch in the way that I synchronise my pictures from my computer to Flickr. In short a large number of images were removed and I’m having to go back, find out which pictures I’d used and update all the relevant blogs. Please let me know if you find one that I missed.

For this weeks PhotoFriday, “Best Friend,” most people seem to have gone with pictures of their slobbering dog or grinning, cutesy couples.

That’s not my style.

I found these ducks in a hotel in Zurich, the yellow one in the bathroom, the chocolate one on the bed. I thought it would be nice to introduce them. They got on famously until one came to an unfortunate, albeit tasty, end.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Crooked.” I’m entry number 187.

This weeks PhotoFriday, “Crooked,” is another one where I thought someone else must have got there before me (especially since I’m two days behind the “Friday” schedule). But, as far as I can tell, no one else has gone for “The Crookedest Street in the World.” Also known as Lombard Street in San Francisco.

(My second choice would have been potentially libellous images of banks or stock exchanges. It maybe just as well I didn’t need to go down that route.)

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Sky-High.” I’m entry number 229.