2013 365-12

This week marked the official beginning of Spring. Since I was completely lost for ideas at the start of the week I thought that I should maybe take shots with a spring feel or theme. Luckily I have a few little plants starting to sprout around the house.

18/03/13

Two little tubs of tomato seedlings growing on the kitchen window. I've just thinned them out and am aiming for maybe 6-8 plants in total to go out into the greenhouse once the risk of frost has passed. Hoping I have a better crop of tomatoes than last year's disappointing performance.

 19/03/13

Outside my kitchen door is a bush which produces lovely yellow flowers. I see it every morning when I have a smoke and let the dog out. This morning was the first time that I noticed that the flowers were starting to return, and here's the proof.

20/03/13

This is a weird plant that was left behind in the house when I moved in. It does strange things, produces strange flowers and I'm just not sure what it is. I don't know where the water came from, but it seemed like a nice picture to try and take.

21/03/13

These are my pepper seedlings which have been slow to sprout but are getting there. I have some sweet peppers (above) and also some chilli seedlings; again I'm aiming for maybe 6 plants in the greenhouse come May.

22/03/13

Friday brought a rather serious dunt to my spring-like feelings. 3-4 inches of snow had fallen overnight, the school I was travelling to had been closed and I nearly went on my arse trying to get to the car. Those are my size 11 foot prints at 7.30 this morning.

23/03/13

Snow continues, effectively knocking my spring ideas on the head. Not be deterred (and still feeling kinda springy) I bought a bunch of flowers when doing some shopping and had a go at photographing them, then adding textures and patterns in post-processing. I'm happy enough with these as a first effort although I suspect there's more possibilities here that I'm not getting just yet.

24/03/13

2013 365-9

And they're off, racing into week nine of this 365 project like there's no tomorrow. Ok - maybe not. It's been a bit slow this week. although I am still in remarkably good form.

25/02/13

200m lens, tripod and cable release set up in the back garden today to see what I could get in terms of the birds coming to visit my bird feeder. Just the usual suspects I'm afraid but nice to look at anyway.

26/02/13

Bunch of flowers, window, moon rising behind. A reminder of a very pleasant evening with some truly nice people.

27/02/13

When I picked Sarah up from school this afternoon, I found that the school playground hand been ringed by thousands of pennies arranged in a neat line. The P7 pupils were doing this as a charity fundraising event. Small but mighty. 

28/02/13

This was taken tonight using a maglite torch suspended from the cross piece of a backdrop stand. The room was blacked out and the camera was set on the ground with a wide angle lens (about 24mm) attached. I used bulb mode, f22, ISO 100 and shutter speeds of around 60-90 seconds. The light trails produced by this were then layered in photoshop with a coloured gradient to produce the final picture. Very spirograph, for those old enough to remember spirographs.

1/03/13

Spring is in the air. Longer days, warmer weather and the first of March. This was a little snowdrop from Stormont estate this afternoon.

2/03/13

Simply Sarah, hanging upside down from monkey bars in the park. Turned upside down of course.

3/03/13

Sunday morning routine. Ironing my shirts while listening to Sunday Sequence on Radio Ulster with William Crawley. I enjoy the strange combination of repetitive activity and philosophical discussion coupled with coffee and smokes. Please don't judge me on the basis of my shirts - they cheer me up when I'm feeling down.

2013 365-7

Week 7 is upon us, or at least upon me. Another week sadly lacking in inspiration for photography, but I'm coming to realise that I go through peaks and troughs in terms of my own creativity and productiveness. It may be something to do with the three photoshoots I tried to cover on Sunday just past - three very different events, three very different sets of demands and problems, three very different atmospheres. Maybe I just got burned out?

11/02/13

One from last night's wrestling action, processed today. Like the way this turned out, and was one of the few times when my timing was actually right. Definitely great fun, and I'd definitely go back if I got the invite.

12/02/13

You have to admire Warhol, if not as an artist then as a shameless self-promoter. The MAC in Belfast has an exhibition on at the moment and it is, being quite honest, very good indeed. A couple of galleries of prints and some video stuff would let you put in a couple of hours. This is the wall of the main staircase, between the two main galleries.

13/02/13

My eldest daughter Siobhan, who was kind enough to come round and get her little sister started on some knitting this afternoon. Stitches were dropped on more than a couple of occasions but I did press Siobhan into posing in front of the speedlights. She hates it - I'm amazed that she still agrees to do it, although it does involve some complaining and then some post-shoot criticism of my photos and processing. I like this one and there was no complaints or criticism. Is that a good sign?

14/02/13

Pictures of my favourite skaters' butts is not something I'm going to take on as a full-time project, but they do wear pants that make me laugh. I was abut to say sometimes, but lately its been pretty much every week. This comes in the same week that a campaign by derby photographers in the USA led to the shutting down of a Tumblr site dedicated to just that topic, due to the amounts of photos posted on it that broke copyright laws. Whoever started the site must have been tired of reading takedown notices.

15/02/13

I have to take more landscapes! It annoys me that I just don't get landscape photography so I've decided to make more of an effort with it. I had read an article on panoramas, got my hands on some nice software and took a swing past Scrabo to test it out. I'm quite happy with how this turned out, although the more I look at it, the tower seems to be leaning ever-so-slightly to the right. Am I imagining this?

16/02/13

A while back, I started to get interested in roadside memorials. I'd recently started driving more in work, and visiting places I hadn't been before with the result that I was passing more of these memorials. I started carrying a spare camera in the car in case I saw one and started pulling over and taking a picture of each. This is the first of two "ghost bikes" in Belfast to commemorate the death of Michael Caulfield. Mr Caulfield was a 56 year-old cyclist and father of four killed after a collision with a lorry on Friday the 15^th April near this spot on the Ormeau Bridge. The bike was placed by an unknown woman. In June 2012, the original ghost bike was stolen but was replaced at the end of June. It has remained there since.

17/02/13

I'm not even going to start to explain why this shot is here. It just had to be here.

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 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

367-50 Week 22

Week 22. Who would have thought it. It's the Easter holidays - dead space. I'm looking forward to seeing some prints I've ordered, with one eye on the judging for the City of Belfast Photographic Society annual exhibition. I fear that I have way too many portrait shots and not enough for the landscape and general sections and too many colour shots, not enough black and white. Anyhow.....here's this week's shots.

9/04/12

It was a very dull Easter Monday for the annual jaunt to Donaghadee. Old home town and all that. Except there's a reason why I only visit once a year. I think the notion of retiring there has gone off me. I couldn't stand it. Or perhaps Donaghadee couldn't stand me. Either way, the only way I could make the trip (and the photo's) look interesting way to resort to cheap post-processing trickery. Or HDR as it's also known.

10/04/12

Easter Tuesday and yet another dull and grey day. We took advantage of a free photoshoot at the new studio in Jessops (although studio is a bit of a grand title for a room with a light box set-up) and then headed off for a bite of lunch. Outside the cafe was the "pop up" MAC with it's rainbow coloured shutters. I hung about for a while but didn't get too many decent shots. This is maybe the best of a poor selection. One to bear in mind perhaps for a rainy day.

11/04/12

This is the engine of my car. It's still quite nice and new under the bonnet, not that I'm under there that often. Today's excuse was getting a small boy to fit a new headlight bulb - way to go Halfords, Boucher Road. I keep forgetting that for some strange Scandinavian reason, my car has five cylinders - that's right - count them. 5. God knows why.

12/04/12

Miniature daffodils shot with the Lensbaby with a 0.4 macro lens screwed on the front. A package of Lensbaby accessories arrived today via Amazon. Macro lenses, wide-angle lens, telephoto lens and a creative aperture kit. Lots of playing ahead. I'm liking the Lensbaby but suspect there's a lot more practice needed due to the hit and miss and fully manual nature of the Lensbaby.

13/04/12

Three small girls on a trampoline - who could resist that sort of photo opportunity? Given that I'd spent the whole day getting prints ready for our annula exhibition judging tomorrow morning I was fairly hacked off with photos. But, as I said, who could resist?

14/04/12

This was the picture which did best for me today at the exhibition judging. I had entered this in a competition last year to be included alongside some of Carrie Davenport's music photography at the Ulster Hall and was chuffed to have it chosen. I then submitted in in a NIPA round and had it rubbished by a very conservative judge. Anyhow, I thought I'd give it a rattle again for the exhibition since it's a shot that I have a lot of affection for. It's actually an old picture, taken in 2010 with my previous camera (Nikon D80). I reprocessed the shot using a few more tweaks to convert it to black and white, which gave it a fuller range of tones than in the original version.

15/04/12

This was supposed to be a ladybird. I was working in the front garden when I spotted the first ladybird of the year. I dashed inside for my camera but by the time I got the Lensbaby attached and screwed in the x4 and x10 macro lenses the ladybird had (quite literally) flown away home. However, a rather large bumble bee arrived and was happy to pose for a few shots. More entertainment for the neighbours who found me lying face down on the lawn apparently pointing my camera at the grass.

367-50 Week 18

Don't ask me why but out of the blue I decided to declare this week "50mm week" on the blog. I have attached my trusty Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens to the camera and will only be taking shots with it this week. I haven't discussed this with Trish yet, and we're shooting a wedding on Saturday. Might have to take the boss's instructions on board for that gig and then get back to the 50mm afterwards. Highlights of this week will be the wedding on Saturday plus the walk up Slemish mountain in the morning to celebrate St Patrick's  Day.

12/03/12

12th March is my number two daughter's birthday, and she was 21 this year. That's Katie in the middle, with Sarah and Ellen on either side after I had cooked dinner for everyone. As Trish pointed out, Katie will be 33 when Sarah celebrates her 21st birthday - that wasn't very well received. Mind you, I'll be 61. If I live that long. The 50mm f1.8 is a cracking little lens for portraits. Sharp, great colours and excellent depth of field.

13/03/12

This is the basil growing in my kitchen, against the kitchen window. This does show off the excellent colour reproduction of the 50mm lens (especially when attached to a Nikon camera) and the superb depth of field. Look at the bokeh on that shot!

14/03/12

Saw this as I drove through Antrim. It's along Stiles Way and there are three of these little bunches, all identical and tied to the fence. Shot this through the car window. I think I had been dealing with death and dying too much in work this week - hence the pre-occupation with this. Although I now realise that I'm, assuming it is some kind of tribute or shrine to someone who died when it might not be. Although it would be my experience that people in Antrim rarely put up flowers on fences for fun.

15/03/12

This is the kind of shot that the 50mm was made for. As in the past few weeks, I took my camera along to Aikido training and the 50mm coped with the low light better than any other lens I own. Again, sharp where it needs to be and nice fall-off in focus into the background. Love the colours, even under fluorescent lights.

16/03/12

A wee bit of cheating/time travel required here. This was taken tomorrow, at the top of Slemish mountain in County Antrim. I knew I was doing the Slemish walk and shooting a wedding on St Patrick's day and wanted to use both in my 367-50 project. We left Belfast at 8am, got the shuttle bus from Buckna to Slemish and were standing on top at around 10.30am. There was heavy, low-lying fog the whole way there but the top of Slemish was bright and clear. This is St Patrick's cross at the very top, looking down onto the fog below. Another advantage of the 50mm - it was light and easy to carry up a mountain. In bright sunlight it gives fantastic depth of field - shot this at f22, 1/125 and ISO 200.

17/03/12

Straight off Slemish, home and shower, bite of lunch then off to shoot a wedding at Ten Square with Trish. As usual, I was doing some shots with the groom's party before Trish arrived with the bride. This is the standard "Reservoir Dogs" shot. It came out well (apart from a slightly grumpy looking best man) and I included it because I was able to clone out a road sign above the heads of the two people on the right using nothing but Lightroom. I surprised myself. It was a lovely wedding shoot - nice couple, lovely guests, a really eccentric priest, great staff in Ten Square and we had dinner laid on for us. Cracking.

I'm heading off to Cuba on Thursday of this week, camera in hand. There may well not be an update on this blog for a couple of weeks, but I'm hoping to have some good shots of Havana to post when I return. Stay tuned!