It is really nice to see the Police being the smart people in this case. Well done to MET Police (in this case).

Description: Our visit to Canterbury in early January
Location: Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, Kent,

Location: Seen on the street in The Strand area, London.
Description: Miss Sixty Fashion

Unfortunately it wasn’t any of my photographs.

I did however come 14th, out of a total of 213 entries. Which on the whole is pretty good I think. I also made the gallery of finalists on the Sanfermin.com website. You can see mine here in the gallery here.

No, the winner was Antonio Lana, from Pamplona. (And I think you’ll agree he deserves it more than I!) Enhorabuena Antonio.

"Hechizo sensual", de Antonio Lana won the 4th annual Erotic photographic competition held by Kukuxumusu y Playboy.

Antonio Lana is from Pamplona, Navarra. He works for Volkswagen, but is a photography aficionado and has won local competitions since 1993.

He explains the background of the photograph in this interview:

It was one in the afternoon. A street cleaning water truck was cleaning the streets, and a girl asked the operator to spray her with some water because of the prevailing heat of the day. The series of images and the winning image captured at the moment, corresponds to the moments after he started this "sensual dance" that charmed all who walked near.

This year there was a record participation in the competition. A total of total of 213 photos in many different styles and distinct themes competed for the 3.000 euro prize.

While there were a total of 143 photos accepted last year for the competition, on this occasion the figure has gone up to 70 more as a result of the work of the 59 photographers who have wished to take part in this competition which combines the erotic and the Sanfermin fiestas. The jury of this competition, made up of expert photographers from both the Playboy magazine as well as from Kukuxumusu.

A selection of the best photos, just as has happened in previous years, is displayed on the website of Sanfermin.com.

Zack Seckler’s iPad Portfolio from Zack Seckler on Vimeo.

The professional opinion is that it it useless for actually doing work.

But it is good for thumbing through photographs.

It is also supposed to be a saviour of sorts for the publishing/magazine industry.

Since I use my laptop with larger screen, and its about €800 cheaper, I think I’ll pass on one.

The winner of this year’s Sanfermin.com/Playboy erotic photography competition was Mauricio Estrada with his entry “Txupinazo de Pasión” or “Txupinazo of passion”.

He gave a great interview to Sanfermin.com. He says, I’d guess pretty toungue-in-cheek, “No tenía ni puta idea de Fotografía” – I didn’t have a fucking clue about photography.

A rough translation of the article as follows:

Mauricio Estrada is 30 years old, and for 3 “I didn’t have a fucking clue about photography” according to what he said with awarded by Sanfermin.com. In 2006 he assisted in classes of artistic photography in the Escuela de Artes y Oficios Pancho Lasso, in Lanzarote and 3 years later he won the Sanfermin erotic photography competition. To get his photograph he staged a Sanfermín in Lanzarote with his camera.

Reflecting on Sanfermin from outside Pamplona was a challenge, but for the Colombian from Pereira, Estrada didn’t get scared and he sought help from a friend from Pamplona to work with him. When he learned what the txupinazo and why people dressed in white, he looked at Sanfermin.com and some other websites to see what type of photographs were possible. With this information, he decided on which area of Teguisse (Lanzarote) was most similar to the casco viejo in Pamplona and convinced Jenny, his flatmate, her boyfriend and some friends to stage the fiesta of Sanfermín.

In between the groups of tourists lost from drink and liqur Mauricio got his photo. “I tried to reflect the debauchery and inhabition of Sanfermín. If you get hot (excited) with your girlfriend, you go to a door and punto (bang!)”, said Estrada.

With the prize money, he intends to move to Madrid to study audiovisual communications, and continue working with photography, which is what he really likes to do. At the moment he is working as a freelance for Lancelot TV, and organises photography exhibitions on the island.

You can see all the finalists in this Sanfermin.com gallery.

Location: Bar Dunkalk, Pamplona, Navarra

I liked this photograph, a picture of a young Iraqi man making Iraqi flags, wearing an Irish soccer jersey.

From the Boston Globe Big Picture photograph story, “Iraq takes a step toward sovereignty”.

An Iraqi man sits at a sewing machine as he assembles an Iraqi flag at his shop in central Baghdad on June 27, 2009. The flag maker says he has been busy to the run up to the withdrawal of US forces from urban areas of Iraq on June 30 handing security over to the Iraqi forces.

Copyright and full legal ownership to: (SABAH ARAR/AFP/Getty Images). The original is here.

Runningwithbulls.com unfortunately was down for the past week, due to problems at my hoster, and subsequently the move away from that hoster to another, Gandi.net (yes the people who do domainname registration).

Unfrortunately, due to this move, I may have lost most of my previous posts since year dot, but I am looking to see what I can do with my backups.

Leaving aside hosting issues, this years Sanfermin was AMAZING!

I managed to make some excellent photographs, and got access to some fantastic positions.

The main idea of RunningWithBulls.com is still the same – a daily photoblog of Sanfermin/Pamplona/Spain/anything else (in that specific order) photographs.

Hopefully you’ll like some of them. If so, please leave a comment and some criticism. All welcome.

Ya falta mucho. Viva Sanfermin! Gora Sanfermin!