Capas’ striking image entitled Death of a Soldier is one of his more famous, partly due to arguments in recent years over its’ authenticity. The image was lauded for capturing what became known as the ‘point of death’, but the photographers’ closeness to the subject and unbelievable timing caused some to suggest the image was staged. However, the identity of the soldier (and therefore the authenticity of the photograph) was uncovered in 2002 in an investigation largely funded by Robert Capas’ brother Cornell, who is known for vehemently protecting his brothers’ reputation.

During the Second World War, Capa took his camera on assignment to London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of Paris. At Normandy, Capa reached the shore with the first wave of American soldiers and took 108 photos using two Contax II cameras with 50mm lenses. On his return to London from Omaha Beach, an employee of Life magazine made a mistake while hurrying to develop the images and melted all but eleven.

After the war, Capa returned to New York and co-founded Magnum Photo with several other war photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson. The co-operative is still in operation, with offices in New York, Tokyo and London and is still owned wholly by the photographers who contribute.

In 1954, Capa was covering the First Indochina War, which would later evolve into the Vietnam War. While photographing a French patrol on May 25th, Capa stepped on a land mine and died shortly after.

Today was the first day of the year that was both sunny and not a work day, so I headed out with my new camera. I spent the morning in Oxford and then headed out to Thrupp and Shipton-on-Cherwell, on the Oxford Canal just outside Kidlington. I’m generally pleased with the pictures – although they show no technical skill on my part.

I uploaded a whole bunch of photos to my flickr account this weekend, including some more of my beautiful car, some taken in my garden and lots taken in both the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Mariana Hummel has some amazingly colourful pictures in her Flickr gallery, including many sky and nature photos.

I had an idea to crop this image to a thin letterbox format, and my plan worked – the perspective looks as if the image is narrower to the right, when actually it’s a plain rectangle.

The Flickr Blog has brought to my attention the work of Catherine Jamieson, a 43 year old mother of two from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her photoset immediately struck me because of both the colours and the textures captured.Catherines’ site was chosen by Forbes magazine as one of the top photoblogs of 2004; the photos are all now maintained on Flickr, and hers is a photostream I will be paying close attention to, alongside current fave photoblogs wvs.topleftpixel.com and www.chromasia.com.