2013 365-10

This week started off with a day off work and a trip north to Mussenden Temple and Downhill Strand, complete with a return journey down the Antrim Coast Road. I would like to point out that that was not me driving my car at 60 mph along the beach with the roof down and the Foo Fighters blasting out at top volume. Just someone who looked like me.

4/03/13

This is an HDR shot of Mussenden Temple taken from Downhill. Everyone has taken this shot, and I was trying to do something a little different. The reflection in the water seemed to provide a bit of foreground interest and the grey sky really looked like it would lend itself to HDR processing. This was produced from 5 shots with +/- 1 exposure steps using Photomatix Essentials then tweaked a little in Photoshop to darken the sky and add some contrast.

5/03/13

The aim to take more concert shots plugs on. I'd contacted Foy Vance's management team about the possibility of getting a photo pass for his concert in Belfast this evening and they were very accommodating  Standard three shots and you're out rules and no written release to sign. So, I ended up getting to photograph an artist who I like - and it was a great show. Support acts were very good too. I am drifting towards black and white for concert stuff - I just think it works really well under the lighting conditions.

6/03/13

You may recognise this fine little chap from an earlier photo. This afternoon I was lacking in inspiration and decided to stick my finger in a photography book and attempt whatever I selected. The project was "50 shots of the same object" and this is what I ended up with. It was fun and more demanding than I thought.

7/03/13

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a shot of Belfast's first "ghost bike." This is the second one, at the junction of North Road and the Upper Newtownards Road. The bike appeared in late August/early September 2011 and commemorates the death of a 31 year-old local Polish woman Iwona Zakierska who was killed at 7.45am on August 3^rd 2011 after a collision with a lorry.

8/03/13

Another gentlemen psychologist's weekend in Donegal, and another five star weekend. Up to Damien's house in Teelin. This was Friday night (drink had been taken) and I had brought a comic relief red nose for everyone. This is uncle Colin demonstrating yet again how his ability to point in a photograph improves it immensely.

9/03/13

 Didn't take the big Nikon with me on our walk today, from Glencollumcille to the signal tower and over the headlands. I did have the little Sony Nex-3 with me and it did a pretty good job and was a hell of a lot easier to carry. It also takes fair enough panoramas "in camera" but doesn't handle high contrat scenes that well - hence my blown out sky on the right.

10/03/13

This is what happens when you try to get a drunk home owner to spin some wire wool with a drunk photographer working the camera. Only usable shot from the whole sorry escapade.

367-50 Week 37

Another week, another week closer to the end of this project and I'm already starting to think about what to do next. The NEST2012 exhibition at T13 made me start thinking about found objects and photos of these. We'll see. I have the Belfast Banshees roller derby bout to look forward to on Saturday night as well. The rest of the week is, always, a mystery.

23/07/12

So here's the story. Around the coast of Britain between the 19th and 22nd of July these installations were being put up. A collection of illuminated tents with accompanying soundscapes of poetry called Peace Camp. We had two here in Northern Ireland and I opted to book tickets to the one at White Park Bay. My daughter Katie and myself set out before 9pm for a 90-minute drive. We arrived at White Park Bay at 10 o'clock to be told that the event was cancelled because of freak winds and freak high tides. I noted that there wasn't actually a breath of wind and the waves were being very well behaved and were in fact, quite far away. In the face of this, Katie and I had a cup of tea and decided to walk down to the beach anyway. All the tents had been taken down (except this one) and no poetry was to be had. Not to be put off without a fight, I tried a few ideas to get some sort of shot before we hit on the idea of getting Katie to go into the tent and wave a torch around it. This was the result on a 30" exposure at f-16, which shows up the tent but keeps a bit of detail in the sky and the foreground. At 10:31, I received an e-mail and a text from the organisers to inform me that the event was cancelled. Go figure.

24/07/12

Just saw this shot in the morning. The light was nice, the colour of the flowers stood out against each other and I thought that a shallow depth of field would work quite well with this.

25/07/12

A wee bit of spare time today and while doing some housework I was struck by the number of dead moths on one of the windowsills. A mystery - time to call in the CSI guys to investigate. I'm really liking the quality and the detail that the Nikon 60mm f2.8 gives. This was taken with the lens nearly pressed up against the subjects, but it came out pretty well. Razor sharp depth of field again.

26/07/12

This was my project for the day. I'd picked up a little Polaroid pocket printer and set about taking a series of headshots of myself. I roughly cropped these shots down in-camera and ended up with about 24 pictures (20 mins roughly, allowing for coffee). I then printed each shot off on the Polaroid printer and assembled the shots (about 30 mins). Took photo of finished piece and voila! I'm looking more like Eric Cantona as I get older and don't shave. A man can dream.

27/07/12

This was taken yesterday during a scouting trip for potential photoshoot locations. The Abbey at Greyabbey has masses of potential, with lots of possible set-ups that don't involve visitor information boards and bright green railings. It is handicapped by very photographer-unfriendly opening hours - 10am - 4.30 pm thus managing to avoid both early morning and evening when the light would be at its best.

28/07/12

Off to shoot Roller Derby this evening, with Belfast Banshees taking on Parma Violents from Scotland. As always, it was a great night and great fun to shoot. I've said it on this blog many times, but the Belfast Roller Derby crew are the best bunch of people to work with. Managed to fill a massive amount of storage space with shots and it is going to take most of tomorrow to process the photos, but it'l be worth it. I'm posting this pic simply because I like it. The framing, the light and the expression - no post-processing; this was how it came out of the camera.

29/07/12

Yep, it's now something like 6.30pm and I'm still sorting through shots from last night to get them posted to Facebook and to Flickr. I'm impressed with how the D800 coped with high ISO and was able to shoot on manual at 1/500 and f4 for most of the night with the D800 on auto ISO. It ranged up to ISO 6400 and these shots haven't been put through any noise reduction software. That will be a job for another day should anyone want them printed or published I suppose. And it was a real boost to see my headshots for the team in the bout programme. They looked really well. Better than the other teams, anyway. The full set from last night's bout can be seen at:

Belfast Banshees vs Parma Violents on Flickr