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 365-14

 Week 14 and things are picking up. An offer of a new long term project starting this week, a spot of good old roller derby and a lot of getting out and about - for that, read more landscapes. I also ended up getting my eyes re-tested this week and now need reading glasses. I apologise for any photos that have not met acceptable levels of sharpness over the last couple of years.

1/04/13

Sunday night brought a visit to Belfast Roller Derby training to get some shots of two visiting coaches from London Roller Girls. This is one of my favourite shots of the night, Jack Attack, who was leading training for the squad.

2/04/13

It might be snowy and bloody cold, but I experienced a real "golden hour" this evening while driving near Greyabbey, Co Down. The sun was just setting and I saw (as I drove past) the light hitting the trees on the far side of this little lake. A quick u-turn later and a dozen shots yielded this; the colour of the trees is really nice, but the reflection of a really well-defined sky in the water of the lake really made this stand out.

3/04/13

This was a very interesting evening for me. I had been approached a couple of weeks back by a couple who I had met through concert photography to document their pregnancy with their first child. This was (as most of my favourite photo projects tend to be) simultaneously fascinating and intimidating. Could I actually do this? What if I messed it up? This was something very important to these genuinely lovely people and they were asking me to photograph it? I did some research, shared some ideas and began the process with an "at home" photoshoot this evening. One of the long term plans is a montage of the bump across the next 5-6 months an we made a really good start with that end of things. We also got a few nice couple shots and planned out a few more ideas for the coming months. The end results of the shoot were 7-8 really nice images. The one above is a simple detail shot; I'm not planning on posting anything identifiable during the project as that feels like some sort of invasion of the couple's privacy. Next shoot will hopefully be in one month's time.

4/04/13

Working in Newcastle this morning and although a bit of thaw has set in, the Mournes looked beautiful still covered in snow. This was taken from a bridge in Dundrum on the Keel Road with the wrong lens and probably the wrong camera settings and no tripod. Turned out pretty well, all things considered.

5/04/13

I'm still working away very slowly on another longer term project on road side memorials to people who have been killed in road accidents. Today was a productive day on that front, and I was able to bag three different shots, although I also missed another two because I wasn't able to get turned or stopped in time to get ut of the car with the camera. I've logged them for future reference, and also have another two logged from different locations over the past week.

6/04/13

Saturday brought the last-minute opportunity to go and take some shots of small boys playing football. I packed my photographer's rights guide in my bag just to be on the safe side. I suffer from mild paranoia about taking photos of children. It certainly was a lovely morning, great light and a rare chance to photograph sports that happen outdoors.

7/04/13

Here's a funny thing. I sometimes take pictures of flowers. Sometimes I take pictures of landscapes. Niether of which I particularly have an interest in. This shot took me an hour of fiddling about to get right and when I posted it to my Facebook page it got exactly zero likes. However, earlier in the week (see above) I posted a landscape shot of the Mournes covered in snow taken hurriedly as I drove back from Newcastle to Belfast. By hurriedly I mean I jumped out the car with the wrong lens and snapped two shots from a bridge in Dundrum. Post that to Facebook and what happens? Loads of likes and comments. There's no pleasing the punters I tell you, no pleasing them.

367-50 Week 40

Week 40 on the project and after this only 12 more weeks to go! By the end of this week I'll have posted 40 weeks of shots, a total of 280 photos. I'm not sure why, but I've returned from holidays with an increased mojo for taking pictures and increased motivation for getting myself out there again. I've been hitting the e-mail hard over the last few days and have turned up some good photo opportunities. Digging pays off and the fruits of said digging will certainly turn up here over the next few months.

13/08/12

It was late on Monday evening and I hadn't taken my shot. Dinner was in the oven and I had about 20 minutes to find something. This was what I found. I shot a few frames but there was something about the texture of the statue, bricks and stones that appealed to me and it seemed to work in sepia. Later that night I sat on a beach and watched the most marvellous sheet lightning storm out over the Irish Sea from a deserted beach on the County Down Coast. I hadn't taken my camera, but it would have been glorious to have gotten a shot of the clouds lighting up from within. It was a damn nice walk and a damn nice evening though, so I'm not complaining.

14/08/12

On the spur of the moment I decided to go into Belfast and shoot the open-top bus celebration for Paddy Barnes and Michael Conlan, two Irish boxers who both won bronze at the Olympic Games. I got some good shots of them but had also heard on the radio that a mural was being painted to celebrate Conlan's win near where he lived. I took a swing by the street and found this, had a chat with the very helpful man who was painting the mural with his son and took this shot, which was my own favourite of the day. I also uploaded the pics and a story to Demotix, the first real news story I've uploaded there in a long time. My story made the front page of the main Demotix website, as least for a couple of hours. That was pretty pleasing. If you want to have a gander at it, you can find it here:

Paddy Barnes/Michael Conlan Story on Demotix

14/08/12

Ok - I got sidetracked this evening whilst looking for props for a photo project with Sarah. I ended up sitting looking through a box of old family stuff - photos, documents, medals, watches etc. There was also a bag containing my late grandfather's orange lodge regalia. This is a detail shot of his sash - as you will notice, it is blue not orange, blue being the colour for temperance lodges. It was quite remarkable that my grandfather was a member of a temperance lodge, given that he was fond of alcohol and whiskey in particular. It's even more remarkable that he decided to leave this stuff to me when he died, given my own particular political and religious opinions. Either that or he had kept his sense of humour right up to his death.

15/08/12

It's rare that I come up with a title for a shot, but this is "The Mighty Atom" - you know, like some sort of 1950's comic book hero/heroine? Light painting fun in the back garden made easier by the fact that the nights are definitely getting darker. One LED torch waved around Sarah on a 30" exposure at f 11 and ISO 100 and then a blast of rear curtain flash at the end to light up Sarah herself. Some of Sarah's shots of me are better than this, but I daren't post them up here. Make me look bad.

16/08/12

This was the result of another evening's light painting exploits. This was all done after 9.30 at night, just after sunset. The main shot is a long exposure and HDR'ed shot of the round tower in Dundrum Castle with the castle being lit up by a hand-held torch. The light spheres were created in the grounds of the castle by taping led lights to a hula hoop and spinning it. The spheres were then cut and pasted into the main picture and re-sized accordingly. I need to work on the spheres a bit more to try to get some kind of glow effect from them, but for a first effort I'm pretty pleased with this.

17/08/12

A total grab shot if ever there was one. Stopped for coffee and a sticky bun (and a smoke) outside and set the camera on the table. I realised it was pointing at this man and his dog, waited for the dog to turn its head and hit the shutter button and prayed that the settings on the camera would do the job. They did.

19/08/12

I'm not sure why there are so many landscapes cropping up on the blog recently, given that the phrase most associated with this type of shot is "I don't do landscapes." I do like this shot though, taken last night and processed this morning. Maybe I just need to do some more and read around it too, get more of an idea of what to look for when setting up landscape shots.