2013 365 33

Zoot alors! It's week 33. A lot of this week involved getting ready to travel to Swansea for my first ever roller derby tournament. About a dozen bouts to shoot in two days, so a lot of prepwork involved.

The death by accidental misadventure of my 70-200mm lens during the week has also added to my sense of panic but a relatively inexpensive (2nd hand) replacement is on its way as I type. Hopefully it gets here on time.

12/08/13

I'm still getting a lot of fun from my 8mm fisheye lens. I took this on a visit to the Ulster Museum today and really like it and some of the other shots I got. OK, so it's HDR'd to within an inch of it's life but so what?

13/08/13

Very small and select secret gig this evening for Belfast punk/oi band Runnin' Riot. Got the chance to hear some of their new stuff ahead of their forthcoming CD launch. There's a chance some of my shots will make it onto the CD cover. In short, it was a blast.

14/08/13

Had my first visit to Castle Espie just outside Comber this week, a haven for a huge variety of birds. I don't do wildlife, but managed to get a couple of half-decent shots. This has to be a day of note as it was the last shots taken with my Tamron 70-200mm lens before it bit the dust big time. Adios my old amigo, you will be missed.

15/08/13

Old shot that I've done before, but not with a fisheye lens. It gave me several other ideas for shots involving a fridge that I naturally didn't get around to.

16/08/13

Had been on the lookout for a set of these blocks to use in the pregnancy/bump project I've been working on for the last few months. It's nearing the end, but we have a few set up shots we'd like to get and spelling out words with these blocks was one of them. Again, the temptation was too much for me. Sorry.

17/08/23

Mods vs Rockers fair and festival today? Sounds like a great idea and an opportunity to get some great shots. How wrong was I? It was dull, there was nothing worth seeing and this was the only shot I came away with. Lesson learned.

18/08/13

Full on zombie shoot with the ladies of Belfast Roller Derby this evening. I had three ideas for shots, two of which worked and one of which I was disappointed with. This was one of the ones that I felt worked very well, although it took a bit of fiddling to get the lighting right. I ended up with two remote flashguns balanced on my stomach and dialled down to 1/32 power to get it just about right. Using the fisheye again, and it also worked really well for another shot - but you'll need to check in next week to see it.

2013 365 - 32

Things are picking up a little after the past few weeks and a little (very little) mojo seems to be returning. A couple of kicks in the teeth this week; couldn't take up an offer to go to a music festival (sick child) and another roller derby promo shoot was cancelled at late notice. However, I plugged away and the wee men were out this week as well as a lot more shooting with the fisheye.

5/08/13

Absolutely loved this shot from last night's wrestling in Antrim. All the elements I've been trying to catch came together at the right time. For the first time I was able to use a three light set-up for the wrestling thanks to the balcony' two speedlights on the balcony to cross-light the ring and one on the camera for fill. That's one going off behind Eamon as he launches himself off the corner post.

6/08/13

I'd promised myself that the wee men would get an airing this week and took them out to the garden and greenhouse. Here they are harvesting the shallots.

7/08/13

This is such a simple shot. It's a weed growing in the middle of the back garden. 60mm macro lens and the whole backdrop blurs into green.

8/08/13

The wee men again. It is sad to note that it is now Augusts and my tomatoes are still green. A couple are threatening to ripen but it's pretty much wall-to-wall green tomatoes in the greenhouse.

9/08/13

Donaghadee lighthouse, shot with the 8mm fisheye and given some faux-hdr processing to bring up the sky.

10/08/13

A bit of fun with the fisheye as well. Can you tell that I'm loving this lens? Depth of field is amazing and the distortion can work very well as a creative tool.

11/08/13

Yep, more fisheye fun, this time at the top of Victoria Square in Belfast. Went there to try some shots of the roof of the viewing gallery and then accidentally put my hand in a shot (not hard to do with a lens with a 180 degree angle of view) and had an idea to try this.

2013 365 31

Ah week 31, my old friend, how are you? It seems (and I've checked) that at about the same point in last year's 365 project I ran out of steam and struggled for motivation. Then shortly afterwards, things picked up again. Lesson learned. Last weeks update was a couple of days late due to apathy; this week's update is late due to having too much to do. Shouldn't complain really.

29/07/13

I've taken this photo before - that's how low my creativity is this week. It's a bird. On a bird feeder. Big deal.

30/07/13

I know the photo makes this look huge, but it's a resin cast of my youngest daughter's hand. We came across a moulding kit (dirt cheap), took it home and tried it out. It was quite interesting and a lot of fun, although not for the wee monkey who had to hold her hand in a tub full of rubbery jelly for 15 minutes to form the mould. Next job is to finely sand down the rough bits and then figure out what we're going to do with it. And what other body parts we can make casts of with the remainder of our supplies.

31/07/13

Ok, so this is bit out of focus but it represents something really exciting in my house - a dinner made using mainly ingredients from the garden and greenhouse. I am awash with the tastiest baby courgettes, shallots and garlic at the moment and these were picked and made into a rather nice pasta sauce.

1/08/13

I was reflecting about last year's 365 project earlier and recall that I spent many shots and updates on the progress of my cucumber plants. Which ultimately failed to deliver a single cucumber. This year, the courgettes have been a big success with three very study and bushy plants producing loads of fruit. The flowers are amazing and I think they are edible too, but I haven't tried one yet.

2/08/13

......mind you, if the courgettes are a success, then the tomatoes must be the biggest disappointment. There are lots of little green tomatoes but nothing that remotely looks like it's going to turn red any time soon. Given the care, attention and love I'm lavishing on them, you think they'd have the decency to hurry up.

03/08/13

The relocation of the Open House Festival to Bangor was a bit strange in my opinion but any reservations about this were kicked into touch after tonight. Local band Farriers played in the amazing setting of Bangor Abbey, accompanied by the wonderful Arco String Quarter. I'll point out that sitting on a wooden church pew for two hours was not the kindest thing I've ever subjected my bottom to, but it was worth it. The band did suggest bringing a cushion with you - I declined. I was wrong. Only took a couple of shots, the main reason being I was enjoying the band too much. That's a compliment to them - they were that good.

3/08/13

I was out wandering about Belfast this morning, primarily to try a few shots of buildings with the new fisheye lens I'd picked up. Thus far I had managed to avoid any contact with the World Police and Fire Games being held here at the moment, and which appears to have turned Belfast into the biggest annual convention for Unformed Dating known to mankind. Anyway, as I walked along the Lagan I was rudely interrupted by the final of the dragon boat race. Swiftly swapping my fisheye for a longer lens, I rattled off a few shots, f which this turned out to be the best.

2013 365 30

Week 30 and my motivation for keeping going with this 365 thing has waned considerably, hence the fact that I'm two days late in posting this. Motivation for photography is pretty high though and I have a big weekend of roller derby and wrestling ahead along with some further playing about with my new fisheye lens.

22/07/13

A wee wander round Belfast with the new 8mm fisheye. Had an idea that I was looking for this sort of "X" shape and walked around until I found the buildings at one junction that made an almost perfect shape for the shot.

23/07/13

Was mightily cheered up today when the postie brought me a little envelope containing two rather fine F2.8 patches all the way from the USA. I cannot decide where to put them but they look nice.

24/07/13

Sarah: Daddy, what does that new lens do?
Me: It does stuff like this
Sarah: That's just weird

25/07/13

Loved this grab shot from roller derby. It's all wrong technically but the lens flare from my flash gun is eye-catching and the skull and crossbones on the glasses is perfectly sharp.

26/07/13

I picked this shot out not because it's the best from the weekend's bout but because it's a good example of where I am right now with my attempts to master derby photography. Three off-camera flashguns placed at turns 3 and 4 with two as key lights (set at 1/4 power) and one as a fill light (set at 1/8 power). The big difference was that I've now started to set a custom white balance based on the combination of overhead fluorescents and flash guns and it seems to have worked wonders in terms of providing accurate colour rendition. I'm a happy bunny, particularly given that I was able to set this up in somewhere completely different and it worked.

27/07/13

Wrestling and more wrestling. God but this is fun to shoot. This was an evening of debuts for new wrestlers so there quite a few characters on display. Things were a wee bit rougher round the edges than usual but it was still great craic.

28/07/13

2013 365-29

Way late this week partly due to being very busy, very tired (I blame the heat) and having too much bloody photography to do. I never get backlogs of photo stuff - until this past few days. It's been an interesting week on the old photography front, not just because I was forced to spend part of it with no camera.

15/07/13

Thanks to good old King Billy defeating King James at the Battle of the Boyne, today was a public holiday and being a public servant, I got the day off. I decided to make another attempt to get to Cloughan Point and photograph the jetty there. I got there and got some shots, but I had foolishly attempted to clean my camera sensor myself before heading out. I made a complete mess of it and ended up with hundreds of streaks across the sensor and managed to convince myself that I had fatally ruined the damn thing. Anyway, Cloughan Point is an amazing spot for photos and today was just the right day - plenty of nice clouds. This was a quickly processed pano of the jetty from the railway tracks and as you'll notice, the streaks are running vertically because its made up of shots taken in portrait mode.

16/07/13

First job for this morning was to book the D800 into my local Calumet store in the hope that it could be cleaned and wasn't, in fact a total write-off. That done, I spent some time this evening working on this shot from yesterday. It's basically an HDR shot with three bracketed shots at +/- 1 EV and then converted into black and white. I spent a lot of time in Photoshop dodging and burning parts of the image and even more time cloning out streaks and spots on the sensor. It's Ok at this resolution but any bigger and it's still a mess. particularly the sky. However, having found how to get there, I intend returning some evening and doing some more long exposure shots.

17/07/13

I admit to owning three cameras. With my D800 in to be rescued I had foolishly lent out my other two cameras to other people and was left camera-less. How to take pictures with no camera - there was the challenge. Of course I still had my iphone, but the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became with the idea of using my flatbed scanner to try some shots. This is the first of the baby courgettes to be harvested from my greenhouse this evening before they got cooked for dinner. Courgette went on scanner, black cloth went over the top and there you have it. Nice enough detail and an interesting depth of field.

18/07/13

This is a pretty dreadful shot of my hand pressed onto the scanner. I think I was either getting desperate or very quickly ran out of ideas.

19/07/13

Good news all round. Camera cleaned with no permanent damage and I found a second hand Samyang fisheye lens for sale. Its an 8mm and is totally manual but with a bit of research got it working on the D800 with some metering. This was taken while walking up North Street, past Keats and Chapman bookshop. Maybe not the best example of fisheye photography but nice to be able to get a well exposed shot right away. I can assure you, there's more to come.

20/07/13

Saturday night meant one thing and one thing only - roller derby. The first ever international bout on Northern Irish soil as the Belfast Banshees took on the Bad Seeds from Stuttgart. This was a great bout with loads of excitement, lead changing hands several time, hard hits and a few laughs. So much so I might just do my own wee write-up for the blog if I get some time this evening or tomorrow. I picked this shot out of the 120 I ended up with; Ra-Ra Rasputina jamming - I've had the pleasure of watching this skater since her early days with the Banshees and she has blossomed over the past two years. Seeing this shot made me think that her style and technique sits pretty well alongside the many top rank American skaters I get to see shots of.

21/07/13

It wasn't a good idea to drink beer before going to the roller derby bout yesterday and then (after sobering up to take photos) going for a couple of more pints at the after party. Those last two pints were quite tasty. Up early with a muggy head and started processing and posting photos from last night. I eventually decided that I needed some fresh air and took a walk across the road to Civil Service Sports Club to watch a bit of cricket. Armed with my 70-200 I soon realised that this lens was just not long enough, shooting in full frame on the D800. Then I had an idea - bump the D800 into DX crop mode which should (in theory) increase the range of my zoom to something closer to 300mm. This worked, but at the cost of losing some sensor space and pixels - I think in DX crop mode the D800 knocks out around 16 megapixels. It worked out pretty well all things considered, but I think that a 400mm telephoto lens would be the minimum for shooting cricket.

2013 365-28

God help me but the heat this week has killed me. Thankfully I got to spend a few days away camping with the wee monkey at the start of the week. That's what the first few shots are off. There's a couple of night-time shots taken in my old home town of Donaghadee as well, which was kind of fun.

8/07/13

Had a go at creating a back-lit portrait using the sun and a speedlight as fill. Needs more work but it does have promise.

9/07/13

Spent a relaxing half hour today cooling our feet in a fountain at Glenarm Castle, until Sarah decided she would start splashing water everywhere. As punishment I made her lie down and I took a photo that made it look as if the fountain was coming out of her mouth.

10/07/13

Old sundial in Glenarm Castle walled garden.

11/07/13

To mark the impending 12th of July tomorrow I hung my brightest, orangest t-shirt out on the line. Irony.

12/07/13

Donaghadee harbour and lighthouse, taken at around 10.30 pm just after the sun had gone down. Lightly HDR'd to bring out the colours.

13/07/13

 Night panorama of Donaghadee. Again a wee touch of HDR to enhance the colours in the town. Liked the reflections of the lights in the water and was lucky to catch two people walking on the beach.

14/07/13

walking through Storment estate this afternoon in search of an elusive cricket match to photograph. The remains of a picnic set out like this on one of the tables.

2013 365-27

Weather is here. Lots of it. Very hot and sticky weather. Have a few things lined up for this weekend, so hoping to get some good shots.

1/07/13

If you saw last week's post, you'll have seen one of the shots from the graduation shoot that I did with my daughter. Today was the big day (for real) and I could have posted up my photo of Sir David Attenborough who was receiving an honorary degree at the same ceremony. That's my very clever and hard-working daughter in the middle, with the dark hair and glasses.

2/07/13

It's time for Muffin the dog to appear again. Muffin has a collection of rubber chickens all of which have no heads. The average life expectancy for a rubber chicken seems to be around one month. Muffin takes this length of time to remove the heads and the squeakers. She seems happier with them that way.

3/07/13

Dinner with Sarah and Ellen at a new Indonesian restaurant called Happy Angel. The highlight of my meal (and that says a lot about the quality of the food) was my attempt at using the menu to make my own happy angel origami piece.

4/07/13

I've posted several of the roadside memorials photos that I've been taking on this blog. I came across this one on the Lagan Weir this afternoon and wonder if it is a memorial to a young man who fell from the weir into the River Lagan and drowned after an evening's drinking in the nearby Odyssey complex.

5/07/13

I came back to the Lagan Weir to take a couple of shots of the numerous padlocks which have been placed there - an homage to the whole bridges/padlocks thing that seems to go on in other european cities. I'm going to check these from time to time to see if the philistines of Belfast City Council cut them off.

6/07/13

I've gone along to spectate and photograph the annual Belfast Pride parade. This year I thought I'd do something different and actually take part with the Belfast Roller Derby squad. A fantastic day out and a real advertisement for the best that Belfast has to offer. My travelling companions gave me plenty of opportunities for great shots. I picked this one, as the ladies got painted with their rainbows before the parade began. This is Rachel and her face and eyes just look amazing.

7/07/13

Bridges skateboard park this afternoon for the 2nd annual Skateboard NI jam. It was hot with very little shade, but yielded some great action shots. No problem with shooting at high shutter speeds without lights today. Main discovery from the day was that skateboards are much more dangerous than both roller derby and BMX. I got hit three times by rogue boards; once in the chest and once on each knee. The last one to my left knee was the worst and needed icepacks, anti-inflamatories and painkillers in order to get my knee back to its original shape and size.

2013 365-26

26th week of the 365 project, so this must be the half way mark. A good week for picking up some photo projects - managed to line up around 8 shoots for over the summer, all sports-related. The weekend saw me shooting a fairly big BMX jam in Belfast and I was also going to get to do some graduation photos for my daughter who graduates from Queens University Belfast next week.

24/06/13

Glenariff waterfall. Taken with a couple of stacked ND filters which allowed me to get a 20 second exposure. I would have tried longer but my cable release was playing up. Worth getting my feet wet for this shot though - seemed to capture just the right amount of movement in the water. I'd like to go back and try this again, preferable once i fix my cable release.

25/06/13

Some, but not all, of the poor people who have to work with me on a daily/weekly basis. Their patience is often stretched. That's me on the right, in case you hadn't guessed.

26/06/13

 On the day that many schools were finishing in Belfast, this was one of the shelves in a local charity shop. I couldn't get a picture out of my head - a very disillusioned teacher dropping off a load of this kind of stuff on their way home to open a large bottle of gin. The summer holidays start here.

27/06/13

My daughter's graduation photo. We did a standard gown/leafy background shot, which I'm sure her mother will love. We did a shot in the gown with Katie holding her rabbits, which I'm sure that Katie will love. This was my shot. Katie has just completed her degree in Biological Science and has been accepted for a PHd starting in September. I'm very proud of her, of her hard work and determination and am looking forward to having a Dr Barbour in the family very soon.

28/06/13

A weekend of BMX competitions and shoots. Due to the typical Belfast Weather this was relocated indoors to the T13 urban sports park. I was using a three light set up which gave me coverage of the two largest jump boxes on the track. This guy pulled this trick about 6 times during the afternoon. I'd noticed it during the warm up and then set myself up for it during the competition, and pre-focused on the edge of the jump box. He is mainly being lit by a speedlight to the right of camera with another speedlight providing fill light from the left and slightly behind. I loved this shot the moment I saw it.

29/06/13

Another absolute cracker of a shot. This is Fids, a rider from England and a slightly more mature guy. His yellow bike was really eye-catching but this shot was a fluke. I was expecting the same kind of crucifix trick most of the other riders pulled (sort of a "look no hands" thing in mid-air) but then Fids threw this in. I believe it is called "the nothing" probably because there's nothing attached to the bike. Had a chance to talk to him after he'd seen the photo and he really liked it. That put a big smile on my face.

30/06/13

Back today to the outdoor tracks at Mary Peters Track in South Belfast. Unfortunately, I just about got my lights set up and a couple of test shots fired off before it started to rain, making the jumps unsafe. This is Bob, who I had taken some nice shots of yesterday. Nice guy who took the time to have a chat about my photos. Got a lot of positive feedback from all the guys there, so I am well chuffed. A good weekend of urban sports photography for 2nd Shooter. Hoorah!