Happy colour, not dark, dramatic, brooding colours.

This was taken in Portugal about 2 and a half years ago – oh god it’s really that long since I did those trips. This one in particular had a big impact [...]]]> There’s a fairly Mahler-esque feeling around this place lately so I want to drop some colour back in.

Happy colour, not dark, dramatic, brooding colours.

This was taken in Portugal about 2 and a half years ago – oh god it’s really that long since I did those trips. This one in particular had a big impact on me personally, if not photographically although I got a couple of nice photographs. Strange the way things shape out sometime.

So it’s Saturday of a bank holiday weekend here in Ireland and I am looking out at a white sky. I will probably give a trip to Sligo tomorrow to have a look at the kitesurfing if the weather looks like it might be reasonable. I’m past the stage that I’ll stand in the pouring rain to take lousy photographs at low shutter speed, particularly given the pile of other tasks I have on my desk at the moment. No point in misusing time in appropriately. I’m not sure what else to do with myself – I have been toying with trips to Antrim as well. Somehow, the last lot of landscape photographs, from the short – mega short – trips to Galway, Clare and Kerry have rekindled my interest in landscape. I don’t know why exactly. I think it’s because I don’t drag the 500 mm zoom around – it weighs a tonne and I hate lugging it with me. Also, there tends to be less sand.

A couple of things to note. Have a read of this – Prairie Light Images – on photographic style. I’m interested in this post for a couple of reasons and one of those is that another photographer told me I had a very distinctive style of photography. That he could identify a photograph taken by me (no matter what the subject), often linked to the way I process photographs. Given the riff-raff collection of photographic subjects I have, I found this rather surprising. In particular I found it surprising given the extent to which some people told me they preferred this or that or the other of the photographs. The flowers went down particularly well with some people, the kites with others, the landscape with others. Some provoked strong negative reaction. And I got pasted for daring to process a photograph and on one occasion, for using a filter to prolong an exposure.

It would appear – somehow – that I do have some sort of style. I just can’t see it myself because I look at so many different things. I do know that from a subject point of view, I’ve always been heavily influenced by marine photographers from France like Philippe Plisson and some of Yann Arthus Bertrand’s stuff. And I have a heavy interest in photographs by Robert Doisneau and Ansel Adams. However, when I look at my own photographs, I don’t always see much input from those influences. I see more from people like Colin Prior and Liam Blake, two outstanding landscapers from Scotland and Ireland. The word I would use for myself is derivative.

I also draw on the photographers around me to some extent. Lucky them

Okay, enough introspection and some photography news.

Wasn’t aware of this bookseller before but with the opening of a new branch in South William Street Dublin, I will look at giving a trip in there to evaluate today. Their website is here.

Via the wonder that is the collective hivemind of twitter (look I don’t follow any sad pathetic famous people like actresses and popstars) I have come across Ben Collins and will give a special shout out for this photograph called Seacombe Wave.

I somehow missed this from Paudie Scanlon a few weeks ago – I’m split between a bunch of feedreaders lately and am not quite on top of reality. I do like it though. The colours are kinda restful. Also this from last week sometime.

And some stuff from Philippe Plisson…For some reason, always my favourite stuff. Image number 3 of the lighthouse was the first print I ever bought. It cost 350FF at the time which was a fairly big chunk of money for me at the time, living in Brittany.

It’s been a while since I namechecked Donncha. Really like this one.

Okay. I think that’s it for now – I believe today is the day that New York Times is doing its 3.15 call – I won’t be anywhere able to do it but for anyone who gives it a shot….way to go.

This was up on Dancing Shades of Light before that site died last year. I was idly looking at stats on flickr and I discover it’s still the most viewed photograph I have there, now 1500 views plus. I remember when it hit about 800 and I thought, fantastic, nothing is going to beat that [...]]]>

This was up on Dancing Shades of Light before that site died last year. I was idly looking at stats on flickr and I discover it’s still the most viewed photograph I have there, now 1500 views plus. I remember when it hit about 800 and I thought, fantastic, nothing is going to beat that ever.

Looking at it now I can see various technical issues – I hadn’t done that many of these, and actually, this is still the biggest one I’ve done. Depending on how many frames you’ve got and and far off the end of the zoom you are they take a greater or lesser amount of time to complete. I think this took about 4-6 hours. It’s still the biggest I’ve done.

It was shot with a 50-500mm zoom lens and stitched together painstakingly in Photoshop. At the time I didn’t use layermasks much (although I use them ubiquitously in the photomanipulations now turning up on the DigitalFX site) and I didn’t have a graphics tablet. The big challenge with this too was the sheer number of frames. I think I had 23 separate frames to glue together. The ones I did before typically maxed out at 12 and because the time lapse between frames was twice as long, there tended to be more space between the kitesurfer in each frame, so less painstaking painting to be done across bits of body, lines, bar, board.

It got a huge reaction at the time. Typically, when Eamon saw it, he pointed out the imperfections on the kitesurfing front. Kite not low enough.

The second most viewed shot on the flickr stream is this one:

which was done sometime later for Francois. While it’s probably technically a better stitch, I had no room to straighten the horizon and so for me, it’s always the one that could have been the greatest of them all.

And I lost a frame out of this one some how.

When you do something like this for someone who doesn’t see it coming, their reaction tends to be great. That reaction is what makes you do it again, and again, huddled over a computer, lining up horizons, trying not to swear about where a wayward hand lands versus a brightly coloured board.

Well that’s the title anyway. It’s not strictly speaking accurate as I know this surfer lives in Dublin and I know this photograph was taken in Morocco. But we did fly home the evening this picture was taken.

I’ve a yen to go travelling again. I’ve had it since about September to be honest but things [...]]]>

Well that’s the title anyway. It’s not strictly speaking accurate as I know this surfer lives in Dublin and I know this photograph was taken in Morocco. But we did fly home the evening this picture was taken.

I’ve a yen to go travelling again. I’ve had it since about September to be honest but things kept getting in the way. Holiday plans in November got hammered from several different quarters, at Christmas also. I own a ticket to Fuerteventura and should hopefully get there sometime in the next week or two. I’m looking forward to it on several grounds – my mind really needs a holiday from Ireland at this stag. Also I need different things to photograph, different places, different aspects of life. I know Fuerteventura is like European but I’m trying to toss up an ambition of making the ordinary look extraordinary and finding beauty in the mundane things we take for granted. It’s very easy to be impressed by photographs taken in exotic places; less easy to find a way of making the things around us seem special. This means I will probably spend most of the summer trying to find the photographs I have not yet taken of Howth and Clontarf with the odd foray as far as Dun Laoghaire.

The photograph above I did all sorts of things with it. My file copy suggests I applied duo tone processing to it and knowing my taste in such things I probably used yellow and black. And then converted it to black and white again. I imagine I messed around with the contrast and the curves considerably as well. I’m still debating whether I could not have gotten a similar effect with a lot less work. I suspect so.

I sometimes like to burn out the highlights in black and white shots just to emphasis contrast. I’m sure this is probably not best practice but someone once told me, with respect to Picasso or someone, that until you knew the rules you couldn’t effectively break them.

But what the hell. Here are some burned out highlights for a kitesurfer in Dublin.

The photograph was taken in June 2006; it was taken the first day I went taking kite photographs in Dublin that year (I’d taken a few in Australia a few weeks’ earlier) with a brand new, as I thought, last lens I was going to buy, 70-300mm Sigma DG APO. It cost me 199E in Conns and was a shocking amount of money to spend on camera equipment I thought at the time. By the end of the year, a 50-500mm costing 1249E had joined it more than doubling the value of my camera equipment and since then, things have gone very wrong altogether. 200E is now laughably little for a lens.

Incidently, if you’re in the market for a value for money zoom and have a Canon, the Sigma DG APO is probably the best value for money lens on the market bar none. And yes, I own the 50mm 1.8 variously known as the nifty fifty and plastic fantastic. The 50mm is cheap and feels cheap. The Sigma is cheap but has survived being dropped and soaked more than a few times. They both, if you’re competent, can be used to take great, great photographs and they both teach you to be competent. Right, enough with the lens dictatory. The weather no cooperata with LivingForLight these days as in it’s perfect while I am doing the day job and lousy when I am not doing the day job. This is very regretable.. As a result, my pink dawn plans fro the morning are probably in deep trouble.

It doesn’t feel like I did a whole lot of photography this year, but still and all, there’s not far shy of 9000 clicks on what was a brand new camera in February. This is from the latter end of the year; 14 November. One of the last outdoor trips I had actually – it’s [...]]]>

It doesn’t feel like I did a whole lot of photography this year, but still and all, there’s not far shy of 9000 clicks on what was a brand new camera in February. This is from the latter end of the year; 14 November. One of the last outdoor trips I had actually – it’s been very cold since. It’s one of the few non-kite photographs I took that day actually and it was a fun day as well.

The picture was taken with a 50-500mm Sigma and a Canon 40D. Processing wise, well most of it was done in Adobe RAW with the contrast bumped up and some messing with the white balance. In Photoshop, I dumped a curve down on the sky to make it a bit more like the sky actually was as opposed to slightly blown out.

Normally at this stage of the year I’d do a quick recap of what I got up to with a camera for the year but the issues I had with the site mean that it’s a giant recap at the moment. Maybe next year. However, there were a few highlights of things I did.

Boards.ie Photography Exhibition, hosted by Dublin Camera Club was a huge success. I still have some photographs, so if you think I have one of yours, please let me know.

One photograph made it into the Irish Times.

I bought a macro lens. And a new camera but that’s just by the way.

Discovered a few very classy photoblogs:

Ronan

Richard

Tommie

Actually I sort of knew about Tommie’s one a bit longer I’m sure but there’s been an amazing stream of stuff out of it.

Also knew about Kevin before the start of the year but there’s some seriously wow stuff there too.

Joe McNally. No I didn’t know about his blog before now.

Darragh

Paula

All good stuff in other words. Got to hear Peter Cox speak to OffShoot Photography, hung photographs in Dollymount, photographed two world champions, and played with lights a bit. A few photowalks. Modded and stopped modding and started modding again Photography on Boards.ie.

Moved house. There’s loads more but I currently have writers block so that’s it for now. Check out Ronan’s bokeh hearts here.

This is my favourite wipe out photograph of all time.

You can’t shoot watersports without happening on the odd wipe out here and there. They get…less than interesting after a while. Big splashes of water. Occasionally something special will come along, and this is one. I don’t think it would have worked from any other angle [...]]]>

This is my favourite wipe out photograph of all time.

You can’t shoot watersports without happening on the odd wipe out here and there. They get…less than interesting after a while. Big splashes of water. Occasionally something special will come along, and this is one. I don’t think it would have worked from any other angle to be honest with you.

Because it’s winter and because I have a 40D and can, the ISO is up at 400. The photograph is also cropped pretty heavily, so there is some digital noise. Noise Ninja wasn’t giving me great feedback because I really am not that good with it yet. I’m not too bothered about it. I’m not sure I’ll ever do a big print of this. I tend not to, lately.

I haven’t been taking so many kite photographs this year. I guess even though I’m supposed to be kitesurfing rather than kite photographing, it’s nice to go and take some photographs to remind myself that actually, I can do it and well. It must be a girly thing to lack the confidence to say “I’m damn good at this”. Some of the other shots today – well the weather helped. The colours are amazing. And it’s nice to be somewhere that the sea is something other than a murky grey such as I get to play with in Dollymount most often.

and I really like this one for some reason.

and I love the colours in this one.