367-50 Week 23

Back to work this week and a million wee things nagging at me to get done. Colleagues who eat up your time needlessly don't help. Anyway, that was all before I even had a cup of coffee in the office on Monday morning and I like my coffee early.

16/04/12

Glad to escape early today to perform my second shooter duties with Trish. Very small and intimate wedding in Belfast City Hall, another lovely couple to work with and great family and guests.

17/04/12

It was late and I didn't have a particularly good day. Everything was making me cross. It then got to be 10 o'clock at night and I hadn't taken my shot for the day. I retired to the kitchen and gave myself 20 minutes to come up with something. This was it.

18/04/12

So, it was a straight choice between a photo of Trish explaining how chicken nuggets are made (you know, when a mummy chicken and a daddy chicken love each other.......), Hannah's face while this was being explained to her, or a shot of Sarah demonstrating how she can put her foot behind her head. No prizes for guessing which I went for. Sarah then completed her yoga demonstration by falling off the sofa.

19/04/12

Having spent almost an entire weekend getting stuck into the garden during March, the first fruits (see what I did there?) of my labour have appeared. Several lines of rocket have shot up, well, like rockets. For the gardeners, they're still under a cloche as I'm well aware of the risk of frost. The rocket has today been joined by spinach. Meanwhile, on the kitchen windowsill, tomato and cucumber seeds have sprouted but there's no sign of the notoriously slow peppers. I love growing my own veggies. Mainly because I can eat them.

20/04/12

I was working in a nice solicitors office and was sitting beside this rather marvellous bookcase. It was the two pairs of shoes which caught my attention (one pair black, the other brown). The elegant flat cap and designer scarf also caught my eye. This smacks of a level of disorganisation that even I can only aspire to.

21/04/12

Spent this morning in Dundonald Library getting the prints ready for our camera club exhibition which opens on the 2nd of May. The club's prints look really well when displayed like this. Sadly we weren't able to put up the winning prints on the main wall within in library as there was a collection of photos already there. Without sounding a wee bit catty, there are not that good but the author is selling them (canvases) for £100 a pop. If they're worth £100 I could sell my pictures and be able to quit my day job. Miaow. Rough count on this wall - I have four shots, Trish has five, Sarah has one.

22/04/12

Last minute decision to visit the newly opened MAC in Belfast today. Thanks to Facebook, I saw that there were a couple of seats left for the play Titanic (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner's Enquiry 1912) and bit the bullet and went along. I was impressed with the new building, although it was less airy and a lot more of a tall, thin space designed in the style of an underground car park. The play (by Owen McCafferty) is a fascinating piece of theatre. I hear that good old Roderick Jaynes will be reviewing it over on Shitflicks at some stage. We saw him at the bar drinking a rather large stiffener during the interval.

367-50 Week 18

Don't ask me why but out of the blue I decided to declare this week "50mm week" on the blog. I have attached my trusty Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens to the camera and will only be taking shots with it this week. I haven't discussed this with Trish yet, and we're shooting a wedding on Saturday. Might have to take the boss's instructions on board for that gig and then get back to the 50mm afterwards. Highlights of this week will be the wedding on Saturday plus the walk up Slemish mountain in the morning to celebrate St Patrick's  Day.

12/03/12

12th March is my number two daughter's birthday, and she was 21 this year. That's Katie in the middle, with Sarah and Ellen on either side after I had cooked dinner for everyone. As Trish pointed out, Katie will be 33 when Sarah celebrates her 21st birthday - that wasn't very well received. Mind you, I'll be 61. If I live that long. The 50mm f1.8 is a cracking little lens for portraits. Sharp, great colours and excellent depth of field.

13/03/12

This is the basil growing in my kitchen, against the kitchen window. This does show off the excellent colour reproduction of the 50mm lens (especially when attached to a Nikon camera) and the superb depth of field. Look at the bokeh on that shot!

14/03/12

Saw this as I drove through Antrim. It's along Stiles Way and there are three of these little bunches, all identical and tied to the fence. Shot this through the car window. I think I had been dealing with death and dying too much in work this week - hence the pre-occupation with this. Although I now realise that I'm, assuming it is some kind of tribute or shrine to someone who died when it might not be. Although it would be my experience that people in Antrim rarely put up flowers on fences for fun.

15/03/12

This is the kind of shot that the 50mm was made for. As in the past few weeks, I took my camera along to Aikido training and the 50mm coped with the low light better than any other lens I own. Again, sharp where it needs to be and nice fall-off in focus into the background. Love the colours, even under fluorescent lights.

16/03/12

A wee bit of cheating/time travel required here. This was taken tomorrow, at the top of Slemish mountain in County Antrim. I knew I was doing the Slemish walk and shooting a wedding on St Patrick's day and wanted to use both in my 367-50 project. We left Belfast at 8am, got the shuttle bus from Buckna to Slemish and were standing on top at around 10.30am. There was heavy, low-lying fog the whole way there but the top of Slemish was bright and clear. This is St Patrick's cross at the very top, looking down onto the fog below. Another advantage of the 50mm - it was light and easy to carry up a mountain. In bright sunlight it gives fantastic depth of field - shot this at f22, 1/125 and ISO 200.

17/03/12

Straight off Slemish, home and shower, bite of lunch then off to shoot a wedding at Ten Square with Trish. As usual, I was doing some shots with the groom's party before Trish arrived with the bride. This is the standard "Reservoir Dogs" shot. It came out well (apart from a slightly grumpy looking best man) and I included it because I was able to clone out a road sign above the heads of the two people on the right using nothing but Lightroom. I surprised myself. It was a lovely wedding shoot - nice couple, lovely guests, a really eccentric priest, great staff in Ten Square and we had dinner laid on for us. Cracking.

I'm heading off to Cuba on Thursday of this week, camera in hand. There may well not be an update on this blog for a couple of weeks, but I'm hoping to have some good shots of Havana to post when I return. Stay tuned!

Nearly a Proper Photoshoot

Tagged along with the boss on Thursday night to Belfast's Bridal Sale Shop open night. I know what it sounds like, but the words "burlesque dancers" and "fire eaters" were mentioned. A great evening, all things considered, and some great, quirky photo opportunities as well as some of the more workmanlike stuff that needed done. The models were great to work with for the more traditional shots:

As for the fire eating, this almost brought the Castlereagh Road in Belfast to a standstill. Great stuff and well worth the trip down for this alone:

And finally, the burlesque dancers. This was a great idea but impossible to get decent shots of, because of the small size of the shop and the crap backgrounds.