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I fell in love today.
You might not be able to see it but the one thing which struck me about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which I was lucky enough to get to see today was how like the Shuttle’s its nose was. Really knocked me about a bit. Something in the expression of the windows.
It’s a beautiful aircraft and for the first time in a while, I actually had fun with photographs.
Here’s a more traditional looking aircraft photograph:
But I loved its nose.
Camera is full of this angle. Sorry I didn’t superwide baby with me but thems the breaks.
One of these is heading for canvasland
I just don’t know which yet. Last one is most likely tbh.
Oh and there are a few more here.
I know it’s been a while.
I’m sorry.
I’ve been busy. And uninspired.
Okay, about these first. They are the first photographs of the new year. I have had opportunities to do sunrises, sunsets and aeroplanes and somewhere, my mind has been saying meh. But today while going about my lawful business of making tea, I was hit with some inspiration. This is a glass which prior to having water in it had a smoothie in it. The tendency of liquidised strawberries to stick to glass is why it was soaking actually. Anyway the bubbles caught my attention. Shortly after that, it occurred to me that I hadn’t put the Christmas lights away yet. So what we have in the second shot is glass, with bubbles and liquidised strawberries, lit by Dunnes Store LED Christmas lights. The first photograph is much the same without the Christmas lights. What struck me about both of them is that there was a seemingly spacey type feel about them; the second in particular.
Which, given that they consist of a glass of water and some Christmas lights is as nice idea. In terms of running them through processing software, the blacks got upped a bit in the first one and the second one, I think I pulled back the exposure ever so slightly as those lights go some weird shade of pink when they are overexposed.
So much for the first picture. I have this 100mm. I’m going to play with it more I think as I’m still a bit devoid of inspiration on the sports front.
I want you to go have a look at this blog post. Before you do so, remember I spend some time in the water, and have some interest in what Roger does.
That way lies crazy. I’m not a full time surf photographer and in the last year I haven’t even done that much kitesurf for various reasons (maybe a world championship trip is called for this year). But there is something completely insane if there are more photographers in a surfing wave than there are surfers. I look at that and my blood just runs cold.
I like surf photography and to be frank, there are certain stock shots which every surfer will get. Identifying the special is the hard part.
Interestingly enough, Tonnta, the Irish surf magazine which has a website here did not have a photograph on the cover of Issue 11. They had a piece of art which was not a photograph. I don’t have a credit to hand but I think it’s still available so you should keep an eye out for it. Tonnta is fortunate enough to get work from some of the finest surf photographers around, including Mickey Smith. And while there have been some breaks with tradition (most of the big magazines when with monochrome shots post Tea’hupoo this year), the thing is, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this before.
I’ve done some similar stuff in the last year (with waves as it happens – see here) and it’s something I quite like the idea of. I based that off a photograph by the way, from Doolin in Clare.
Anyway, I’ve been saving up this blog post to say that the early water based photographers were innovative; I’m just not sure it’s all that special any more.
What else:
Yes. Alan Ross. Have a look here. I am ashamed that I have only happened across Alan’s work very recently.
Right. I think that’s it for now. I need to start taking more photographs. I also need to review some books because while I have not been taking photographs, I have been buying books about taking photographs, namely Lee Frost’s one on nightphotography and Tom Bol’s latest one on sports photography (some great photographs).
Also, if you have a copy of Digital Photo Pro this month, you’ll find a piece on Michael Clark, whose Adventure Photography is my definitive read on the subject.
I’m not one hundred per cent sure where that necklace is at the moment.
I’ve always liked this.
I seem to have this thing about lines:
This from Inch last week, those waves were from the post Katia swell. One guy attempted to go surfing; I didn’t really pay too much attention to him and he didn’t get much out of them.
Okay. Jeremie Eloy is doing some filming. This is some mega kitesurfing from Tea’hupoo.
This is a FANTASTIC short surf film titled Africa. Not sure where exactly.
And a great basejumping one here.
This is a terrific timelapse shot from the ISS which if you have not seen it, you should see it now.
Skydivers via the Flickr Blog.
Freediving via the Guardian Blog.
When I got to Lahinch on Monday, it looked as though it had been snowing. The whole beach was covered in this foam stuff which consisted basically of sea water and sand from what I can see (look, I got absolutely covered in it). It was fascinating. Because of the way it was blowing up over the sea wall, it looked, on occasion, as though it were snowing. Kids had a ball in it, although I’d imagine their mothers was groaning at the mess they were making of themselves.
What fascinated me was the way the foam behaved. It looked very gloopy; a bit like condensed milk.
and it broke like waves.
I mean, look at this for a tube….
I spent some time in south west Ireland over the past few days.
This was taken from the prom in Lahinch and there will be a few more from there along with some from Inch County Kerry over the next day or so
All my life I’ve wanted to get a shot like this. In theory I had planned to go down to Doolin Point but there was general advice to people not to go to the Cliffs of Moher, and to be honest, it was so wild in Lahinch and I’d had a fairly rough drive down the country I just hadn’t the guts to get as far as Doolin. It may have been a mistake on my part; on the other hand I got photographs I couldn’t even imagine in Lahinch.
I managed to destroy myself, and three lenses while I was there. The 50-500 mm, in the end, was so coated in water that I couldn’t clear it enough to get the autofocus to work. So much of the next day was spent cleaning them all before taking them to Kerry for a trip to Inch.
I discovered the other day that I had done the first photograph of this ilk way back in 2007 on a photograph that I liked a lot at the time but had forgotten about. This is from yesterday too.
Have had a productive morning doing stuff like packing a camera bag for a top secret trip (we’ll know later in the week whether it was even remotely successful – but if it is I will be a truly happy person). One of the things I wanted to do was look at some photographs by Mickey Smith again – I’m angling up to purchase one myself which seems crazy when you bear in mind that I have plenty of photographs of my own, so many that I can actually forget some of them exist. But there was a great one in Spring’s Tonnta. I wish he’d sort out his website.
On balance, while I haven’t taken that many photographs this year, I got some nice ones, and at least six that I’m more than pleased to see adorning my own walls. Two are already there; taken in Cork, and two more from Clare are due to arrive shortly. There’s a third one from Clare to come but I want to print it on very high gloss paper. I’d have to say this year is definitely a better year for me than last year was, even given the comparative lack of activity.
Makes me smile anyway 
I hope I spelled his name right. I’m not good with Estonian.
In theory – because theory is a wonderful thing – I was planning on being in New York with the ASP event today. That didn’t work out according to plan for so many reasons it’s not funny. Instead I have crashed out in Dublin for a week doing Stuff. Important Stuff. Paperwork Stuff.
Today involved a lot of that stuff but at lunch time, I looked at the windmeter on Dun Laoghaire, picked up my camera and abandoned it all to hell. I took 150 photographs which isn’t loads but to be honest, I had other things on my mind. Dublin had some modicum of waves today and while I’d no great desire to try and play with the erratic wind, I did have a mind to go and get my bodyboard. For the first time in months I abandoned the camera in favour of sports. Can’t remember the last time that happened.
I haven’t really worked out which photographs I liked most.
but there are some nice things. Things that leave nice marks on my soul. With lots of people smiling.
Like so.
In other great news I got a Present today, a book called True which is a history of the first 10 years of North Kiteboarding. I didn’t know it existed until today, and once I found about about it, I had to have it. There are some fantastic photographs in it – in a way I’m sorry I didn’t have it when I was talking to Dublin Camera Club a few weeks ago. If you have a while free I strongly recommend you have a look at Christoph Maderer’s kitesurfing gallery which I will helpfully link to here. There are things in there that I would kill to do. I need some lighting solutions.
Yesterday I handed a disposable camera full of photographs of teddybears to Ronan Palliser of DCC for a disposable camera thing. I have no idea how the photos are going to shape out; I have never played with single use cameras and in the past when I have used compact cameras, I’d used them enough to predict with some accuracy what the outcome would look like.
I haven’t been taking a lot of photographs this year, and very, very few sports photographs it has to be said. When you have a day like today, you know, it gets to be worth it.
I’m going to be mad stiff tomorrow thanks to the bodyboarding though. Ouch.
This was taken ca 2003.
If I could find the print, I could confirm the year at least. It’s possible the processing date is on the back of the print. The photograph was taken with an Olympus OM10 which is still in the room here beside me, on what was almost certainly some sort of Fuji film, 200 ISO. I know this because that’s what I used nearly all the freaking time apart from using a black and white C41 once. That being said, the level of grain involved here suggests it *might* be ISO400. I’ll leave it to others who are more film nerdy than me to figure it out. Because of the vignetting – which is characteristic to one lens I own – I’m almost certain it was taken with a 35-105mm zoom which I think was made by Tokina. I could check I suppose – it’s not so far away.
The photograph is one of a series which is special to me, three of which I scanned years ago and lost on a drive. As in I knew where the drive was but the powerlead was missing. It turned up during a house move, confused with the powerlead of the scanner, and today I had cause to go looking for something else (a font, of all things) so while I was in there, I dug out the scanned photographs too. I’m relieved that most of them were actually reasonably decent sized scans done on my older scanner.
They were all done before I knew anything much about digital processing too.
I took a lot of photographs that day because I like waves breaking on rocks, I like reasonably decent skies and for all it looks in the black and white, the sky was actually blue that day. I went through whatever film I had – in the days when I might, if I were really lucky, have 3 36 shot rolls to hand, that was a lot of film to go through. Now of course I can take 4000 photographs in a day and the only one to complain is myself when I have to process them afterwards.
I love this photograph. It lacks the crispness of the digital shots, admittedly, and the highlights in the white water are blown out. I did some dodging and burning to try and fix the worst of that but it’s never going to be perfect without a raw file. This photograph was taken on the day that I discovered that Doolin was my soulfood place in Ireland. It was also taken a few days before I learned – or started attempting to learn – to surf. In a way, without this photograph, I’d never have taken the series of photographs I took down there in May.
When I am giving photography lessons, I do heavily emphasise that for every one photograph you take, every other photograph you may have taken to that point in time will contribute to what makes that photograph great. This was taken on a film camera, in the days when I flatly refused to take photographs of human beings but it is a basic building block of every single kitesurfing photograph I have ever taken.
I was planning on going to New York to the ASP surf championship but circumstances outside my control dictate that I can’t be in New York for it until Friday at the earliest and they expect to be finished by then. So I am tossing up heading to the west coast to try and get some more of these things instead. That, or France back to the Verdon. I don’t know.
This is the beach in Duncannon, County Wexford, a small village with a fort, a lighthouse and a lot of places to stay. Last weekend it was over-run with kitesurfers. Seriously over-run. They outnumbered the abseilers and archers by about 35 to 1.
The weather on Saturday, unique in the country I believe, was utterly atrocious and had I not been away from home, I would have personally stayed put in bed rather than brave the conditions. Which were, as I say, unique to Duncannon. Everywhere else was basking in tropical sunshine. People I know got sunburned in Cork, never mind Dublin.
People keep telling me, you get wet anyway. I do if I’m kitesurfing. If I’m taking kitesurfing photographs, I tend to get wet from the ground up, rather than the sky down. I don’t like rain. I’ll rephrase that. I love rain. Very heavy rain, coming from the southwest, battering my window hard enough to provide the sort of percussive soundtrack that outdoes the Foo Fighters or Beethoven’s 9th provided I am on the side of my window that is equipped with a duvet, a roof, a cup of hot chocolate and a central heating system. Standing on the beach taking photographs of kitesurfers in the pouring rain lacks somewhat in its attractions. So much the better if the stereo is playing Damien Rice’s 9 Crimes as well. Anyway, a key part of this is that my hair isn’t getting wet, and additionally, the front element of my camera isn’t getting wet either. It’s in a camera bag safe and sound, somewhere.
Saturday however, it didn’t quite go according to plan, so I just want to highlight that taking kitesurfing photographs isn’t all sunshine, white beaches for miles, girls in bikinis, superlooking dudes in boardshorts with adorable foreign accents and straws stuck in fresh coconuts. Sometimes it’s just misery inducing. When the weather is like this, the amount of water that hits the front of your lens means that autofocus goes on holiday, shutter speeds start collapsing, you press buttons, nothing happens and then you wish you had an Olympus.
Little lakes of water somehow endeavour to slosh around the bottom rim of your glasses (look that’s really unnerving) and you start to wish that kitesurfing photography was, in fact, all sunshine, white beaches for miles, girls in bikinis, an army of dudes bearing coconuts with straws stuck in them demanding to see your photographs of their front to back mobes and moaning that they didn’t get the kitelines low enough. Cameron Dietrich told me it rains in Maui as well. I bet it’s still warmer than I was after 4 hours of this on Saturday. I took 67 photographs. All of them were murky. I think about 14 of them made it through rain-damaged quality control.
Okay. Moaning done. The photograph above is notable because of a) the colour and b) the evidence of the weather. As such, it’s a counterpoint to most of the mainstream kitesurfing photographs; it provides evidence that the sport does not exist in a fantasy world exemplified by the average wetsuit ad (it’s never raining in wetsuit ads – have you noticed this – hey – NPX I will do a rainy wetsuit shoot for you for nothing in Achill in Ireland provided you give me Andre Phillip as a model. In the grand scheme of things I can’t see myself framing it and hanging it over the mantelpiece. I liked Duncannon, I would love to go down there some weekend that the sun pokes its rays through the murk and the mist; and it’s near another one of my projects, the Hook Lighthouse which I didn’t get to see because to be frank, I was too miserably wet to divert. Next time. For future reference, the drive is around 2 and a half hours from Dublin and features motorway most of the time. In reality, I could do a dawn shoot down there if I just don’t go to bed.
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In other news, you should read this by Ronan Palliser because he says very nice things about me. Last night I was a guest of Dublin Camera Club where I endeavoured to speak for one hour about kitesurfing photographs, why I do it, how I do it, and what the risks are. I said far less than I could have, mindful of the fact that I wanted not to bore the living daylights out of people and also because my brain is a sponge and some of the info got squeezed out by “all those people they’re looking at me Aiiiiiiiiiiii”. I did, however, refer to photographs of injured water surf photographers and here is one for a frame of reference. When I say there are risks, I’m not trying to scare you off – I just want you to be realistic. That’s real blood. In South Africa. I think they have sharks there too.
I want to thank Paul Stanley and Chris Ducker of Dublin Camera Club who invited me to come and blather on about sports photography. I especially want to thank the hordes of people who filled Dublin Camera Club’s meeting room last night – You were a great audience and responded to my cri de coeur for questions – nothing worse than saying “Look, why are you all here” to be greeted by silence. I didn’t get that and I appreciated the interaction and communication from the floor. I stand over the 5000 missed shots comment by the way. We don’t have time to set them up.
Ronan Palliser talked me into joining your disposable camera challenge which means I have to take photographs without all those lovely tools which I explained were essential like shutter speed control and zooms. And preview. Oh god, no live view. How will I survive.
Anyway, still, thanks and all to you all – I hope you enjoyed it and I will put a list of resources together this evening for you. It will be linked from the top menu bar.
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In other news, two brand new books arrived from the very nice people at Amazon very early this morning, as in, before I woke up, one called Action and Sports Photography which I have coveted for some time, and now I have, and the other called Kitesurf Planet by Roberto Foresti which I glanced through this morning before breakfast because An Post were kind enough to wake me at 7.10 to deliver it. Since I paid for Amazon’s Supersaver Delivery (you know, the free one that takes a couple of extra days to arrive), I’m quite impressed that the books which were despatched from Amazon Central Holding Facility Somewhere Or Other In The UK I Think on Monday arrived before 8am on Wednesday. I’ve had UPS deliveries take longer and they cost more than Free.
Roberto Foresti is the official, or at least was, the official photographer for the Professional Kiteriders Association. I’ve seen him once when I was shooting a PKRA event in Portugal a few years ago. Leafing through the book was unnerving for one odd reason. He has a lot of photographs from that event in there too. It’s strange to look at someone else’s view of the same world sometimes. Anyway, that book arrived this morning as I say and I’m looking forward to examining it in more detail. A review of both books will follow.
In other news, apparently there’s a new Surfer’s Path waiting for me when I get an iPad back in contact with a wireless connection. All told, it’s a good day today.
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