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.