As posted by Peter in the comments here, Panoramic Earth has a number of 360 degree photos of places around Wellington. Mousing over the photos allows you to turn at your own pace, and the handy Google Map at the bottom shows which direction you're facing.

The pics include:

• The Sculpture Garden
• The top of the Cable Car
• Oriental Bay
• And my personal favourite, Inside Te Papa

There's a whole bunch more too, so go and play.

This looks really good:

You can see some more of John Lake's work on some of those big display units at the new park on the western end of Courtenay Place (Courtenay West Park?).

Lolcat style pics invade real life jumping from teh intartubes.

From flickr user Simon Lieschke, and as spotted in this morning's (ever entertaining) Wellington Flickr Pool.

On a recent visit ex-Wellingtonian photographer Jo Russ used her artist's eye to snap a set of images which share a certain group characteristic; I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I feel like I'm looking at the mundane and the familiar from an outsider's fresh perspective.

More after the jump.

A new photography group, "gasp!", has an exhibition entitled "a sharp intake of breath" at Finc Café from now until 10 June.

[Photo © Geraldine Downey, 2007]

The group (Geraldine Downey, Andrew Ecclestone, Stella Ramage, Paul Holley and Jordyn O'Keeffe) gave themselves the wide brief for the exhibition of creating images inspired by the word 'enigma'. The brief exhibition catalogue explains that they were "Aiming to make space for a slower, deeper vision amongst the torrent of visual information that swamps us everyday. We wanted to produce images which asked more questions than they answered, to arouse a flicker of intrigue, a shiver of unease, or create a pause for thought."

Following the success of the recent Wellington Flickr Group's exhibition at the Paramount, cames yet more photographic goodness from a Wellington flickr-ite legend A Different Perspective (aka Jim Henderson).

He's putting on an exhibition of his work down at Island Bay's The Bach café, from the 1st to the 30th of April.

To get a feel for what you might be seeing, check out his awesome flickr photostream here.

As always, the photoblog over on the right hand sidebar proves itself a rich source of short-term distraction. This morning it was displaying this photo, from where I went on a little voyage of 'phubble' discovery, which eventually led me to this brilliant image of a phubble at the Basin Reserve...

The worlds largest soap bubble blown by 10 year old Mary Smith of Wellington who can just be seen at the bottom behind the bubble. It took her 7 hours and 38 minutes to get it to this size before a passing seagull flew through it and burst it. Mary was treated for Hypoxia and given a lolly.

Brilliant.

[Image by Mark Turnbull]

We all know that Wellington is a great place to take photos: its natural beauty, public art, lively street life and eclectic architecture all contribute to a visually stimulating city. The busy Flickr-ers of the Wellington Flickr group know this, and they've decided to take their best photos into the real world.

"Online to On the Wall" opens at the Paramount Theatre tomorrow night at 6pm, and runs until the 28th of March.

It's the 20th anniversary of homosexual law reform in New Zealand and the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand (LAGANZ) are celebrating with a photo exhibition at Turnbull House. The exhibition is entitled "What are you afraid of?"

When: Exhibition open Monday July 10 to Wednesday July 12, 10am to 6pm.
Where: Large Gallery, Turnbull House, Bowen Street, Wellington
Free entry: Koha welcome.

An exhibition of photographs covering the fight for homosexual law reform is being prepared for showing in Wellington and Auckland. The July exhibition coincides with the 20th anniversary of the passing of the law reform bill.

The photographs cover street marches and rallies, and a few glimpses of behind-the-scenes activities in the mid-80's campaign which resulted in sex between gay men no longer being illegal. The law reform didn't come without action by thousands of gay men and lesbians and their supporters around the country.

For more information go to the LAGANZ website.

Here are a few things to keep your mind off the weather this weekend.

The World Press Photo '06 exhibition kicks off at Shed 11 today. It's been interesting to see that the publicity around town has taken a very political angle this year.

Just along the waterfront at the Museum of Wellington City and Sea (I wish they'd find a shorter name!), they're already two weeks into the month-long Wellingtonia LIVE event. The word "eclectic" doesn't even begin to describe the range of things going on there: there's a performances from the Tinakori Handbell Association, a Matariki celebration with Toni Huata, hurdy-gurdies, shanty singers, ghost tours, kete weaving and a debate on the controversial Marine Education Centre. My main interest will be in the series of talks organised by the Architectural Centre entitled "Why I do architecture". These kick off at 1pm tomorrow with Anna Kemble-Walsh and Martin Hanley of Red Design and John Mills of John Mills Architects.

From eclectic to electric: new synth-pop band The Blush Response have their debut gig at Sandwiches tomorrow night. The band may be new, but the musicians will be very familiar to Wellingtonians: Jeramiah Ross (aka Module), Rhian Sheehan, Raashi Malik (of Rhombus, among others) and Paul McLaney of Gramsci.

Finally, you could always try to figure out the location of the current Mystery Bar. If you do, you'd better get looking tonight because it's closed on Saturday nights (that's a clue). It also has something in common with Sandwiches.

Just quietly, there's an intriguing little exhibition on at Shed 11 until Sunday: "Transitions" is a collection of images by photography students at Massey University. All the photographs are of the waterfront, covering diverse subjects such as the visiting "Big Lift" ship, the inner workings of the Brewery and the way that marine life manages to colonise even rubbish and pollutants.

It's all a little bit self-referential, since many of the images investigate the ever-changing nature of the waterfront, and the venue itself looks likely to see a significant change soon. There are plans afoot to make it the permanent home of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery and the New Zealand Centre for Photography. The photography theme continues next week with the start of the World Press Photo 06 exhibition.