2013 365-22

Some week of taking photos that was. The more I did, the more I got asked to do and I'm loving it. The slow morphing into a sports togger continues. I'm writing this on a very sunny Tuesday evening in Belfast. So sunny that I took myself off to Tesco and bought a nice little table and chairs for the back garden, and that's where I am right now.

27/05/13

I was on the road to Bangor on a mission of sorts and realised that I would pass Rihanna's tree. Everyone in Northern Ireland knows the story of how the farmer who owned this field came out and ordered Rihanna to cover herself up. The tree looks much more bleak in winter but it had decided to sprout some leaves. I juked into the field, took my t-shirt off and took a couple of photos. I didn't get shouted at by a fundamentalist farmer.

28/05/13

At the weekend I invested in a e-cigarette and began to try it out. It's not bad and (touch wood) I hadn't touched a real smoke for three days when I took this self-portrait. The glowing blue tip is a wee bit weird, but I'm going to give it a try and see how it works out.

29/05/13

I was doing the psychology thing today, and assessing a simply charming boy who had been home schooled. At the end of the assessment, he presented me with 6 free range eggs from his own chickens in the back yard of the family home. This was quite simply the best thing ever. The eggs are amazing.

30/05/13

BMX jump track at Mary Peters complex in Dunmurray. I've been asked to shoot a big BMX event (or Jam as the kids like to say) at the end of June and wanted to check it out beforehand. The new bike trails here are out of this world and the jump track is breathtaking. I ran across Shaggy who was working on the dirt jumps and John (pictured). This was taken with no lights and with the ISO ramped up. I think with my full lighting kit in place, this is going to produce some awesome shots. Roll on the 29th and 30th June and the Monster Jam.

31/05/13

I arrived home to a rather nice surprise today. I had entered this shot in the Belfast City Council photo competition many months ago and had frankly forgotten about it. Today I received a letter telling me that it had won first place in the buildings and art section and I have been invited to attend a prize ceremony in two week's time to pick up a (small) cheque. Chuffed to bits.

1/06/13

This weekend I managed to blag myself shooting privileges at T13 skate park for the Flatland Jam. Essentially, this involves riders doing tricks on the flat, or dancing on bikes as it was described to me. The organisers went out of the way to help me and allowed me to get on with what I wanted t do. I used a slightly modified version of my roller derby set-up with three lights set up, two to cross light the stage and one to provide a bit of fill light. Again, slow(ish) shutter speeds and low ISO produced some really punchy shots. My only gripe is that its hard to get a feel for the speed that these tricks were being performed at. 8 riders, all of whom were really talented and who approached the competition in very different ways.

2/06/13

This is the winner of the Flatland Jam, Aran. This guy and a spanish rider called Alex really set the place on fire, and produced a close-fought final, Aran took away a nice cheque and an all-expenses trip and entry into the world championships later this year.

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.

2013 365-1

Titling this post made me think for some reason of George Lucas's debut film THX 1138. A wee bit expressionless and cold.

I stopped my picture-a-day project on my birthday in November 2012 and took 6 weeks away from the commitment of taking a shot every day and posting updates every week. It felt weird and I really didn't like it - I missed the demands, the discipline and the commitment. It was a chore sometimes but it gave more back to me that it took. So, take a 6 week break and then kick off again, this time with a year long 365 project to document 2013 in all it's ups and downs. Lets rock and roll.

01/01/13

Not a tremendous shot to start off with, but I found myself standing at the top of Victoria Square with a hangover and a camera. Tried to frame the H&W cranes through the triangular windows of the viewing gallery and sort of succeeded. Pity about the dirty glass.

2/01/13

I was tidying up the junk room in my house and came across this old telephone handset. It sparked off a few ideas for the wee men and this was maybe the pick of the bunch. I entitled it "Ralph had a tough decision to make" but when I posted it on my Facebook page i inadvertently typed "touch" instead of "tough." No one corrected me - I'll assume anyone who saw it was either too polite or thought I was being cleverer than I actually am.

03/01/13

By day three I was getting into the habit of carrying a camera with me when i went out. This was a late afternoon walk through Stormont, taken at around 4.30pm. I was trying to capture the shadow here but the dogs add something.

 04/01/13

First wire wool burn of the year at the Twelve Arches bridge near Newcastle. It's OK but there's a lot wrong with it. It's way too soft for one thing and I'd have liked to have seen more the bridge/arches. A return visit at a later date; different lens maybe and a few more attempts at it may be in order.

05/01/13

Thanks to the ever-so-inventive Debbie, I ended up shooting at the Belfry indoor skate park in Newcastle this afternoon. Two off-camera flashes working remotely from my camera and some very impressive skaters and boarders made this a really fun session. The two skaters were fantastic and I think I might have pushed them a wee bit to get the shots I wanted. Plenty of interest from the people and kids present.
This is part of me continuing to try to figure out using off-camera flash to freeze action with the ultimate aim of starting shooting roller derby with strobes. I've now got three flashes that can all be triggered and adjusted from my camera, so may visit roller derby training some time soon and start working out the practical aspects of lighting for bouts.

06/01/13

More flag protest in Belfast yesterday, two days of violence and unrest, shots fired at the police, police using baton rounds and water canons. Everyone blaming everyone else. It saddens me to see how little has changed in Northern Ireland when an issue like this crops up and how polarised this society can still be. I'll let this one speak for itself.

367-50 A Reflection

367 shots. One a day for just over a year. This project just became part of my life. It slipped in there, became part of the daily routine, without actually taking over my life. As I reached the end of this I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the project and the photos I've taken over the last year. Here's what I came up with.

My photography has improved. Overall, there's good shots, average shots and poor shots but the ratio of good to bad has improved over the year. I'm shooting in raw nearly all the time and my preference has become to shoot on manual much more often than I ever would have.

There were big changes in my life across the period of time of this project. My marriage breaking up was the biggest by a long way and keeping on taking photos helped me through. Having something to concentrate on each day, even if it was only for a short time, was useful for me. I want to keep this post about the photography; the relationship stuff would need a blog of it's own.

I changed my camera. Out went the old reliable D90 and in came the kick-ass D800. I miss the D90 but the capability of the D800 is incredible. I'm still coming to terms with it and it could be a little better for sports and live music stuff, but it simply is an amazing piece of kit.

I was bemoaning the fact that I've never developed a "style" in terms of photography. My eldest daughter described my approach to photography as being like Pokemon - I collect style and techniques and then move on to something different and it can seem like I'm trying to bag as many techniques as I can. That is true - I see something I like and I want to try it/replicate it/ find out how it was done. But I also run with it too, I push the techniques when and where I can and see what else is possible. It was also pointed out to me that constantly changing and experimenting may actually be my style. Trying different styles and approaches has been great fun. I think I had been getting into a bland rut and was relying too much on the views and opinions of a small number of people.

For a while I forgot about what other people thought and just did what I wanted to do, exposed myself to areas of photography I'd never tried (landscapes, long exposure, light painting, boudoir) and generally tried to branch out. I also made the effort to express myself through my photography on at least a couple of occasions - I actually tried to use pictures to communicate how I was feeling at a particular time.

Leaving the camera club I had been in and not joining another was also the correct move for me. I feel that there's a certain narrow view of photography that exists within the camera club setup here in Northern Ireland and I think I had become too tuned into that rather than focusing on what I what I wanted to do. Seeing pictures that do well in competitions made me feel two things; firstly, they were generally all great shots if a bit over-processed. Secondly they just weren't the sort of shots I wanted to take.

I think, looking back, that I've also been forced to push myself more in terms of getting to grips with the technical aspects of shooting. I've also had the opportunity to do some "semi-pro" shoots where someone has been relying on me to produce the goods. I guess this started with Belfast Roller Derby who adopted me as their official photographer but there have been plenty of others, and the opportunities have increased across the year, mainly due to positive word of mouth and also simply getting in touch with people and asking if they needed a photographer. Some say yes, some say no, but there's no point in getting put off by the odd knock-back. If you're serious, you keep asking. Eventually people will ask you.

Keeping the blog has been a positive experience for me as well. Posting weekly rather than daily updates worked well for me and pulling in anything up to 1300 views a month meant that people were at least having a look. I'd have liked to have generated more comments on the blog about the photos I was posting. There were a few good ones, a few bad ones and a couple of quite nasty and hurtful ones. I have to admit that the nastier ones hurt when I read them, and I did have a wee rant about one in particular but it never stopped me pushing forward and keeping going. I guess you don't write a blog and put yourself "out there" unless you can't put up with someone having a go at you or your content.

There were a couple of comments I decided not to publish that were spiteful, and were either left as "anonymous" or (I'm pretty cure) were left under a false name. I was fairly sure I knew where they had come from and as such, hoped that I was able to see them for what they were. It certainly wasn't about the photography. There were times over the last year when I was less robust mentally and emotionally than I wanted to be but again, having a purpose and a direction kept me on track.

Anyhow, I'm taking a break from the picture-a-day thing for a while. I may kick off again in the new year with something a bit more focussed on some of the areas of photography I want to develop a bit more. I'm going to keep on burning stuff and the orbs will still be spinning. Here's one from the weekend, just in case you've read this far and wondered where the photos on a photoblog were.

Uncle Colin burns some wire wool. Marble Hill, November 2012

367-50 Week 47

The weather was definitely starting to turn. Lots of rain and few opportunities to get out and about, but it is the start of October I suppose. Lets see what we can come up with this week, dodging the showers.

1/10/12

So the mystery plants in the garden finally flowered today - at the start of October? What self-respecting flower comes out in October? I had thought that I'd killed this plant when it suddenly died back and vanished but then it put out a dozen of these remarkable pods which today began to open and produce long purple flowers this morning. Hurrah! It's not dead and I didn't kill it. At least not yet.

2/10/12

A fairground up the road? Why not? Pity the place was empty and closed down for the night half and hour after I arrived because of the lack of trade. I got a few shots - this one taken with the Lensbaby Composer with a start-shaped aperture disc. I played around with it and got some very impressionistic shots of star-shaped bokeh. I liked this one, although it is a bit if a mess compositionally.

3/10/12

Sarah and I went to this footbridge in Dundonald over the dual carriageway to Newtownards in order to ger her taking some long exposure shots of car tail lights. It seemed a shame not to try out and orb while we were there and we got some nice shots. While working at these shots, a man appeared from no-where and asked to check out what we were doing - or more exactly he knew what we were doing and wanted to have a look. Got chatting to Andy, swapped details, ended up being ten minutes later picking my other daughter up from Guides. Whoops.

4/10/12

Got bitten by the light painting bug this week without a doubt. Wanted to try this shot, thanks to some of Denis Smith's stuff (if you want to see his shots, check last week's blog post). Taken at 8.30pm with a six minute exposure and a 30 second orb.

5/10/12

Love this shot. Took my two youngest daughters down to the Titanic building to try out some light painting and on the way back to the car saw this shot as being very possible. Tramped over some waste ground, famed it up using the same settings as we had used over at the Titanic building and (more by chance) this was the second shot out of the camera. Not much post-processing on this other that cropping in lightroom. 30 second exposure seemed to work well for both the cranes and the orb. Got a really nice glow under the orb too. This would look good printed and mounted. Any takers?

6/10/12

Two flower shots in the same week! Have I gone mad? I just couldn't resist this. When I moved into this house in May under what could best be described as difficult circumstances, there was a pot on the kitchen window sill with what looked like two dried onions in it. I watered them and they put out a couple of leaves. I kept watering them through the summer and nothing happened. Then suddenly, about two weeks ago, one of them produced a shoot which turned into this. I'm a sucker for growing stuff and seeing something like this come from what looked like a lifeless lump does cheer me up. I pulled the muslin curtain behind the flower and shot it with my 60mm macro and an f-stop of 3.5.

7/10/12

Went to the Belfast Roller Derby new skater recruitment evening today to take some shots. This isn't really a new skater, it's my derby daughter Katie. Katie has been training hard over the last number of months and is about to do her minimums and move up. She was also asked to talk to the new skaters about what it's like being "fresh meat" in the derby team. It was a brief chat, but informative. Amazing to see how much more confident she is on skates now - only a matter of time before I'm shooting her in a bout for the Banshees.

367-50 Week 44

I have a few things planned this week, and my exploits with wire wool have attracted a bit of interest from a couple of different sources. A few people have been in touch for advice/info on how to do these shots and a band have been in touch to ask if I could look at doing a promo shoot for them using the technique. Need to scout some locations over the week or two and see what I can come up with.

10/09/12

It was World Suicide Prevention Day today and I was invited to go along to PIPS on the Antrim Road in Belfast where they were having a chinese lantern launch. I was made to feel very welcome and it was very moving to see individuals and families bereaved by suicide lighting and releasing lanterns into the night sky, many with cards and messages attached. I've sent some images to PIPS in the hope that they can use them for publicity with some of the local newspapers. This is my favourite shot from the evening by a long way. It's also (I just realised) shot number 300 on this project - I'm glad it's something meaningful.

11/09/12

So, a total lack of inspiration this afternoon ended up with me resorting to some cheap camera/iphone trickery just so I could say that I've taken a shot. Urggghhhh. I need to get out and burn something. Soon.

12/09/12

I love this shot. Sarah and I had been talking about trying something like this for ages after seeing a couple of shots that involved rings and hands. First, we had to save up our 20p pieces for a week. Then we had to find a local garage or shop that sold rings (20p each) out of a vending machine. After a couple of attempts and a bit of searching we tracked one down. If only we'd been looking for bouncy balls, temporary tattoos or stick on moustaches. After spending £2.40 we had 8 rings, three bracelets and a necklace. And here's the final shot.

13/09/12

You've just got to love this. My son Conor and I went out for an evening of camera fun and games underneath a big bridge in East Belfast. We did some light painting, made some light spheres and burned some wire wool. I'd seen a shot earlier in the week that made me think of trying something like this out. It worked very well, was reasonably simple to do and just needed the same camera settings as I'd used before (30" exposure, f9 and ISO 200). I like the way the streaks of sparks are coming towards the camera and the light trails made by them bouncing on the ground. More of this is definitely on the cards.

14/09/12

Autumn, I fear, is upon us. Snapped a shot of my little maple tree as the leaves were beginning to wither. Love the colours this tree has all year round although until next spring it's just going to be another twig in a pot.

15/09/12

Travelled to Dublin today for Dublin Roller Girls vs Brighton Rockers. It was my first time shooting in the National Basketball Arena and the lighting is even worse than the Valley Leisure Centre. A couple of things helped - setting my white balance to tungsten to match the overhead lights was very useful and batch processing the raw files through the noise reduction software within Lightroom4 seemed to do a pretty good job. It was certainly faster than individually processing each shot through my normal noise reduction software and produced good enough results for posting on line.

16/09/12

Another form last night, although all my shots were processed this morning due the late hour I got back from Dublin. That and the need for a large Indian take away and a glass of wine. Enjoyed shooting this as the style and approach to the game are very different from in Belfast. Didn't enjoy being offered a photo pass and then being asked to pay to get in or being told where/what I could shoot. Guess I'm just used to the easy-going nature of Belfast Roller Derby. It meant I wasn't able to get shots of the team benches or the penalty boxes, both of which I love to take shots of between jams. Pity about that, but other wise a worthwhile trip.