367-50 Week 39

 Week 39 sees me spending the week in Donegal with family. Although the weather started off wet and grey, by the middle of the week the sun was shining and the beach was being visited nearly every day. I was lucky to be there with a great bunch of individuals, most of whom (but not all) are my children ranging from 9 to 23. The week was stress-free, enjoyable and actually quite relaxing. I got to cook for big numbers every evening and most of the meals went down well. Having acces to wifi in a little local coffee shop was always going to be a bonus.

5/08/11

As noted, the weather wasn't shaping up well when we arrived although it didn't prevent a trip to Marble Hill Strand for a spot of paddling on our first full day there. there's nothing like seeing small children enjoy getting their feet into the ocean, even if it is the generally freezing cold North Atlantic. Big kids like me tend to enjoy it too and look forward to it.

6/08/12

This was a little men project that I'd planned for a few weeks before we went. I set up nine installations totalling 15 wee men around the garden of the house we were staying in. These ranged from the odds and ends box of figures (above) to nude sunbathers and nuns. I put these out in the evening with the intention of photographing them the next morning. Heavy overnight rain had me worried, but only one of the set-ups suffered and eight were left intact. This isn't the best of them, but this is where I retreated to for a smoke in the evenings. 

7/08/12

This kinda summed up the week - in the morning it rained, then around lunchtime it suddenly brightened up and the sum came out, and stayed out for the rest of the week. Colin's house is surrounded by these lovely big daisies and I took a few shots of them with raindrops in place. This is my favourite and I think the crop works really well on this shot.

8/08/12

Climbing Muckish today - one of my favourite walks in Donegal. The miner's path is simply gorgeous and well worth the trip, even without the views from the very top of Muckish. We took a big squad, led by the redoubtable Colin McClelland and everyone had a ball.

9/08/12

Horse riding in Dunfanaghy - three of my daughters (Siobhan, Ellen and Sarah) were going out for an hour long lesson. As you can see, Sarah was more than a little excited by the thought of getting to not only ride a horse for real (she'd only ever been on lead-outs before) but to trot as well. They all enjoyed it and I even had the sense to dose the super-allergenic Ellen with anti-histamines before she went near a horse.

10/08/12

This is the little cat who appeared to be living wild around the house were we were staying. She was very wary of people and it took a full five days before she would come anywhere close to anyone. By Friday night I had her taking food from my hand and she allowed me to pet her. By Saturday she was sitting on my knee and coming when she was called. She was more than a little underweight, but got two square meals a day for the week we were there. There was considerable discussion and disagreement about whether we should bring her home with us. We didn't in the end but only after extracting a promise from Colin that he would feed her while he was there.

11/08/12

The Ulster Museum to see the Da Vinci drawings in exhibition there. I had planned this shot for months - a view down into the atrium and a bit of tilt-shift processing for that miniature effect. Except I hadn't figured on the buggers hanging two massive pterodactyls from the ceiling. I took the shot anyway and this is the tilt-shift effect built into the Nikon D800. Probably not as good as doing it the harder way in Photoshop, but the pterodactyls had knocked the stuffing out me.

Had a grand old day today getting out and about and am now roasting the arse off some peppers for dinner later. Actually came back from Donegal more relaxed than I went. Can't complain about that.

367-50 Week 2

Week two of my 367-50 project and so signs of slacking. Everything taken on the D90 this week.

I had to include a picture from the QFT, as Trish and I have been going there regularly on a Monday night since shortly after we met. It's something I look forward too and helps make Mondays a lot more bearable knowing I have that to look forward to. Over the last two and a bit years we've seen a rake of movies; some good, some terrible but it's the little gems that pop up unexpectedly that make all the difference. We saw the latest Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris on Monday night. It was average.

21/11/11

Tuesday's picture came about after an early finish to a staff meeting in work. Early finish was due to the three team leaders who talk the arse off everyone being absent, therefore the agenda got worked through in a very effective way. We even managed to arrange our Xmas outing and still finish an hour early. We were meeting in the Antrim Board Centre and I fancied a quick jaunt down to the Loughshore car park. I just happened to have some of my wee men with me and tried out various shots with a tiny photographer while trying to prevent the ducks from eating him. Liked this one because of the nicely coloured autumnal leaf.

22/11/11

I was lacking in inspiration on Wednesday and also trying to balance being busy in work and feeling quite run down and tired. This was taken while playing about with my wee figures again. I'd got two old ladies and a bench in a recent box of figures and had decided to christen them Sadie and Agnes. I had the idea of trying to see what it would look like if they went to various famous places and sat in front of them. As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of my own grandmother who visited many famous and beautiful places but steadfastly refused to get out of the car. For her, the journey was more interesting than the destination. This is "Sadie and Agnes visit Pompeii" if you're interested.

23/11/11

The "feeling run down and tired" thing was obviously a warning. Thursday morning was not pleasant and I had apparently caught the same bug that had been kicking around the house for the last few weeks. High temperature, sore joints etc. Had to take to bed. Lying in bed hurt my back; being up and about hurt my knees. I shuttled back and forward, alternating between reading Anne-Celine Jaeger's excellent book Image Makers, Image Takers and working my way through Call of Duty MW3. Felt inspired enough to take a picture of my sick bed.

24/11/11

Friday was more of the same, although I was definitely on the mend. Got up and got some bits and pieces done around the house and then returned to another of my on-going ideas for wee men projects - the Little Bankers. I've been thinking about Bankers and particularly in terms of the Occupy protests and other slightly socialist stuff. This got me thinking about building a series of shots around the theme of Bankers destroying the ecomony, making their money but getting caught for it. Fairy tales, I know. This one came to me while thinking about them getting arrested, and is called "The Wee Bankers Get Lifted."

25/11/11

Saturday was a good day although I was still a little wiped. I had heard word that there was a roller derby in Belfast this evening and sent off an e-mail asking if I could get a photo pass. E-mail reply arrived at lunchtime and I was set to go. Had my little dark apprentice with me, which I hadn't planned on but it was great craic and she enjoyed it. I found this shoot technically difficult - I had to manually set my white balance for the first time due to the flourescent lighting. I ended up having to use very high ISO settings to get decent shutter speeds (1/250 - 1/300) for the action and therefore ended up with grainy prints. Again, aged photo settings in Lightroom hides a multitude of sins and some slight work using Topaz DeNoise on the worst of them seemed to help a little. This was a fun event to go to and shoot at. Wonder if the ladies would be up for some team portraits - maybe along the line of the aikido club shots I did earlier in the year? Hmmmmmm - I might make them an offer.

26/11/11

And finally, today. Lazy Sunday morning reading the virtual papers on my iPad followed by coffee and a big veggie fry. Processing/publishing the roller derby shots from last night. Walking the dog with Sarah. Shopping and cooking dinner for me, Trish, Maud, Hannah and Sarah. Quorn fillets in onion gravy, cauliflower cheese, spicy lemon sprouts and loads of mash. That's what I call a Sunday. These are my sprouts, before being drained and flash fried with lemon juice and curry spices.

27/11/11

Two weeks down, fifty to go. It's making me think more about photography.

367-50 Week 1

Got my 367-50 project started this Tuesday on my birthday. Seems fitting that my first picture is birthday-related, so I've selected a shot of the birthday cake my work colleagues got for me. Note the bad spelling; what do you ecpect from a bunch of Educational Psychologists?

15/11/11

The next shot is my in-car picnic. Due to the nature of my work, It's not easy to take photos that show what I do during the working day. One of the things I find myself doing is having picnics in the car, between visits or as an excuse to get out of the office for a while. This was more up-market than usual, as I had been into the Tower Centre in Ballymena and got some grub from M&S and a couple of books from Waterstones. Ate this sitting in The People's Park, reading my books.

16/11/11

Next picture is just a macro shot of my favourite Rizla liquorice rolling papers. Thanks to Lynsey, I have a good dozen packs of these at home - they're hard to get anywhere except Tesco.

17/11/11

My fascination for miniature figures has grown, and I was delighted to stumble across Slinkachu's work and his book "Little People in the City." I ordered up some more figures from Amazon and they arrived this afternoon. Slinkachu's work made me think more about having some sort of narrative for my pictures and about the context for these. This was my first effort with some tiny businessmen. I tried to make it look like something was happening, and used my laptop screen with a spreadsheet as the out of focus background.

18/11/11

Saturday brought an onset of DIY (my personal nemesis) and Trish and I finally got round to taking down the huge kitchen cupboard that existed in order to give me something to bang my head on. After nearly killing ourselves (yes, the huge heavy cupboard was only held up with two screws) it all went smoothly and after a trip to IKEA we got our shelf, lights and picture frames up. Now we have to agree on what pictures to put in the frames. I also had an excuse to get some of my family pictures out of storage and onto the top of the shelf.

19/11/11

Finally around to today's picture. Got the little businessmen out again, and spent some time thinking about narratvie and context before switching my camera on. Trish has pointed out that about a year ago, I would have described any talk of "narrative and context" as pretentious wank. Which it probably is - apologies. I think this set worked out better than the earlier shot above - the narrative is better?

20/11/11

That's my first week of taking a picture every day. I'm still not into carrying my D90 everywhere with me, hence the pictures from the iPhone. So far, so good. 6 shots down, 361 to go!