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 365-7

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.