So, from the last month or two, here are a few.

Taking pictures of people is not something that necessarily comes naturally to me. Most of these were done, I think, with the 50mm 1.8. There may be a couple of [...]]]> Strangely enough, it seems like all I have been doing lately is shooting pictures of people.

So, from the last month or two, here are a few.

Taking pictures of people is not something that necessarily comes naturally to me. Most of these were done, I think, with the 50mm 1.8. There may be a couple of 17-85s thrown in there as well.

In links, what do I have.

Julie has little treats.

Phil has handprints.

Jennifer is on Moore Street.

Darren’s abandoned farmhouse.

Tommie…well…words as usual not adequate.

Stephen’s weather is altogether different.

Louise’s puffins.

Okay, that’s it for now.

I didn’t have any real plan in mind but wound up as far south as Brittas Bay. I kept hearing about Brittas Bay but really and truly, all [...]]]> After a rather trying time with a composite work, I was advised by Richard to go out in the sunshine. So I did. All the way to Wicklow.

I didn’t have any real plan in mind but wound up as far south as Brittas Bay. I kept hearing about Brittas Bay but really and truly, all it is is a huge beach and today it didn’t do Beach for me. So after looking at it for about 5 minutes and idly wishing the wind turbines were a touch closer, I got back in the car and drove to Wicklow. Where I passed this.

According to my reading of the map, this is Wicklow Head Lighthouse. You can walk a good part of the way to it past some sheep (and little lambs – some of which were black and very cute but very running away) and some cattle. You might be able to get closer but I was playing chicken with the sun which was on its way down behind an inconveniently located Wicklow mountain. So I went for the lighthouse.

Anyone who knows me at all well knows that Philippe Plisson is probably my favourite photographer in the world and he is particularly well known for some superlative shots of the lighthouses in Brittany. There is also some really hot stuff by Jean Guichard but what both of them have in common is a lot of photographs of lighthouses. I like lighthouses. I like them a lot. There’s something lonely sentinel about them. This one is a bit like that. I’d like to have a go off it at dawn when the sun is arriving rather than when it’s disappearing, and also from a bit closer with a 10-20. But I like this; there’s something warm about it.

A little while later, after I’d played with a castle and some filters, I had a look at the harbour light and this is what I got.

I think there might have been one filter left on – it was getting dark enough to stretch the exposures without using the filters anyway.

I quite like both of them to be honest; they might be the nicest lighthouse shots I’ve done. While I was in the harbour area in Wicklow a man told me I should have been there 2 weeks ago, the sky was an amazing pink. Que faire?

Anyway, this is from my big day out today. I wound up in Wicklow with the objective of adding to the Abandoned Boats collection but that just didn’t happen because I was distracted with ruins and lighthouses.

On the way home, however, I got [...]]]> I was in Dignes Les Bains today having done the train des Pignes. I had hoped for photos out of that but they were all taken through a window that doubled as a fly cemetry and frankly meh is as good as you’ll get for any of them.

On the way home, however, I got caught in the Carnival Parade. I don’t do religion/Lent/that stuff but I thought Carnival ended on Shrove Tuesday. Evidently the Ville de Nice doesn’t give much of a toss for the religious side of things either. Carnival is on for another week or so here, apparently. Colourful parade every night.

I was fortunate enough to have a festival pass for Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin last year and it was fun. But compared to what I caught of the Carnival parade tonight, it sucked. We have no real idea how to party. There were no restrictions or anything here on this; you could hop in and join and play havoc. People did.

I got a few photographs although I hadn’t planned for shootoing it tonight. They were all taken with the 50mm 1.8, no flash, and I think I shot ISO up to 800 at one stage.

From the 13 or 14 that made it up to the pixie account, here are a few:

This one is [at the moment] my favourite shot. Something about the colours. If I remember the float correctly, that’s the face of a puppet in the throes of popping out another puppet other end.

Frogface

I think this one is Asterix but I wouldn’t swear to it. I also think the theme of the parade was to pay more attention to ecological matters which if you saw the mess of confetti and streamers around the streets when it was all over, you’d see some irony. I’ll probably have a better shot tomorrow with a speedlite – can’t swear to it though as the 50mm worked out nicely. I’ll also not bother with the staged seating as I was able to get up nice and close courtesy of being stuck on the street unable to get to my hotel.

Yep. A tulip that I think would look rather nice on a Christmas card.

Something like this I would like to decorate a Christmas tree. I wonder if it’d be possible to cast these [...]]]> Christmas is fast approaching so here’s a vaguely Christmassy looking shot – well I think it is anyway – taken not at Christmas.

Yep. A tulip that I think would look rather nice on a Christmas card.

Something like this I would like to decorate a Christmas tree. I wonder if it’d be possible to cast these things in molten metal without completely wilting them before the metal hardens. There’s something I need to look into.

Anyway, a couple of things.

There’s a photowalk tomorrow. Details here. It’s related to pixie and Bord Gais in some way. I can’t be there as I’ll be in Cork waiting to come back to Dublin.

Okay, a few links from what I can garner out of my various feeds.

The Photographic Pyramid.

Confined III from Richard. Worth looking at that full set actually.

Darragh Sherwin has a new site that he kept very quiet about.

Peter Cox is trying to get to Inis Tearaght but the weather is not cooperating. This reminds me that I have plans for a lighthouse in Sligo after Christmas/when I have free time/god knows when now that I think of it.

I have a suspicion this is from Tommie’s rceent trip to Syria from which he has a terrific selection of photographs.

Some fantastic skydiving stuff to be seen here.

I need to take a few more photographs.

The way I do this – on this occasion – is to use the multi-fire functionality of my flash. And also I wish I had a master unit to use the flash [...]]]> So I have this vision inside my head of a piece of jewellery that flashes points of light, a black background, and multiple exposures.

The way I do this – on this occasion – is to use the multi-fire functionality of my flash. And also I wish I had a master unit to use the flash remotely. I don’t, and the ones for the Canon cost more money than I really wish to spend on photography gear in the present times. Improvisation is the name of the game.

In the absence of a ready supply of diamonds or cubic zirconia, I have an opal which has starred in photographs before. I also have a lack of black backround stuff. Improvisation continues to be the name of the game. Work skirt called into duty.

What I really wanted to do was use a very wide open aperture so mega shallow depth of field, swing the pendant over and back and have the flash fire 10 times or whatever. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that trying to keep a swinging pendant within the DOF on a 50mm lens open at 1.8 when you can’t see what you’re doing is a physical impossibility. I dropped that idea and rammed it up to 8 so that I’d more room to manoeuvre on the swinging of the shiny blue stuff front. I eventually took 23 photographs out of which I extracted 4 that I felt I could *something* with. Then I discovered that one of them was pretty much dead after I got it up loaded.

This is a drag, really. In some shape or form, it’s not too far from what I was looking for but I really need a fabric that absorbs far, far more light. I just don’t know if I can get it; that’s the problem.

Most of the product photography that I see done through the various photography groups I am involved in tend to involve lightboxes. I don’t own one and I’m not hugely enthused about buying more gear to [...]]]> One of the things I was interested in giving a shot at was sort of product glossy magazine type photographs.

Most of the product photography that I see done through the various photography groups I am involved in tend to involve lightboxes. I don’t own one and I’m not hugely enthused about buying more gear to set up photographs that I might not do too much with. Also, I spend a lot of time in in the outdoors and am slightly more interested in decontextualising products and doing something different with them. This came out of a discussion I had with a marketing guy from Quiksilver at some stage when we were talking about kite photography. He had visions of me getting a kitesurfer into Blackrock Baths I think; something which is unworkable because of the DART lines. But I put the idea away and decided to use it some other time.

Because it’s dark in the evenings, and the weather is generally miserable when it’s not dark, most of the photographs I’ve been taking lately have been in doors, and occasionally in the dark. I’ve been playing with toys and tricks either via the iPhone or the camera itself. Last week I got an intervalometre – the Canon one – for my 40D and had visions of things involving stars, gel light off camera flash. So on Friday evening I packed all the gear up and went to Dun Laoghaire to do a little more exploring.

Dun Laoghaire is starting to be my favourite place to take photographs lately. I only went out a while ago to recce a left of centre photography shoot that’s being stymied by the weather and tide so I have a lot to learn before I’ve exhausted my options. It’s more, much more to me, than Howth is and I never thought I’d say that.

Friday evening, in addition to all the camera gear, I also packed a bottle of nail varnish and a small little ickle bottle of perfume. I used to have loads of these; wish I had more. They sell them in gift sets so I’m going to look at getting a few more for experiments of this nature. The nail polish I chose because of the strong colour and I also liked the shape of the bottle.

One of the comments on this suggested that it wouldn’t look out of place on a glossy magazine. This was either shot with the 2.8 100mm macro or the 1.8mm 50. The interest in this type of shot was born out of the coffee and phone shot a few weeks ago (Modern Life is a Mobile Phone and Coffee on the Run). It’s not perfect – I can see one or two imperfections and also, if I had a choice again, I’d shoot it against a vertical array of lights rather than the single line. there was a little ickle bit of colour temperature work done on which had a negative impact on the shade in the traffic light which is the vaguely green light you can see left of centre.

I’ve other plans for this little bottle except every time I touch it I get covered in perfume. I finished that photography shoot smelling like downstairs in Brown Thomas. I need it to stop raining first however.

This is the nail polish shot. For my money, it’s slightly better technically speaking than the perfume bottle. It’s got a slightly strong colour but also that reflective top which is a bags to shoot. The next time I do this, I’d try to use a bottle of nail polish with a black or white cap. It’d be easier.

I’m eying up all sorts of stuff around the house though, including the iron, bits of crockery and idling wondering what I could do to totally decontextualise them and do something to make them catch people’s attention.

This is just by way of something to decorate the walls of this post.

Joe McNally – who is fast becoming one of my favourite photography bloggers – has a piece here which I’d be hard pushed to describe. It’s a story of looking at life from the direction of a photographer who – basically – [...]]]>

This is just by way of something to decorate the walls of this post.

Joe McNally – who is fast becoming one of my favourite photography bloggers – has a piece here which I’d be hard pushed to describe. It’s a story of looking at life from the direction of a photographer who – basically – just stumbled through life without any Grand Design and ended up where he is because he is who he is. It’s a letter to a young photographer. It’s worth reading from two perspectives; the letter itself, and secondly, the comments – of which there are a large number – from readers.

Joe McNally caught my attention because of this book. He sort of works in an area of photography that I can’t get my head around, but he is a super writer (see the rest of his blog) that makes everything feel very accessible. He pops up with Strobist quite a bit as well.

Anyway. The interesting part about this is that people keep suggesting that I might like to go into photography full time. The really interesting part about this is that when I was 14 years old I wanted to teach English in French secondary schools and now that I’m 20 years older than that, I know I don’t want to teach English in French secondary schools (I know this because I did this) and no one would have forecast when I graduated DCU in 1994 that I’d be a) in Dublin b) working in IT.

Life has an odd way of ignoring the plans you make for it. And your destiny is not set in stone at the age of 19.

I’ve mixed feelings about this. I can’t see myself doing the money stuff in photography – namely weddings and football – and yet, the odds of making a living doing the stuff I love – kitesurfing and quirky little things that you’d never see coming like Newbridge silver lighthouses (for which I’ve another plan ngngngngnh)

and pianos. I haven’t worked out how to make a living out of these things yet.

The hard part is that working at something you love – particularly when it brings a load of paperwork – is hard going.

I don’t know if I have the guts to do it.

It was the first time I was out at night with a flash – usually I rely on ambient light to shoot stuff – but I’d seen some really hot post dusk wakeboarding shots and wanted to have a go at something similar. Albeit, [...]]]> Sometime last year, Eamon Armstrong and I did a night kite shoot.

It was the first time I was out at night with a flash – usually I rely on ambient light to shoot stuff – but I’d seen some really hot post dusk wakeboarding shots and wanted to have a go at something similar. Albeit, without 15 off camera flashes.

This is what we came up with. The photographs were taken with the last 40D (ie the now dead 40D), a 580EXII and the lens was the 50mm 1.8 prime chosen to remove options from my mind.

The bad part is the flash range is about 10 metres. This means I’m standing in water – barely visible – for a kitesurfer to come flying past me closer than he’d normally be anyway to try and make these shots.

This shot was november on the 2009 Pure Magic calendar all of which I shot so currently I see it every day and I still love it. It was the best shot we got that evening and was worth the being freezing cold. I was also reminded of this because on Saturday, while I was in Sligo, shooting these, we did talk about night sessions afterwards. So want to do that again. Can’t quite face the cold right now.

Have to flag this fantastic time lapse of the Mardi Gras. It’s a bit slow to download but is well worth waiting for.

Also want to flag this from Bryan Elkus – Cape Hatteras Sunrise

Richard was lightpainting last night.

James Jordan has this Under the Stars which I think is just gorgeous.

As the long winter evenings are in, I am having thoughts about things I want to do with a little lack of light.

This is one of the last afterdark shots from South County Dublin this evening. I haven’t really done anything like this before. I don’t think I’ve even tried. I’d given some of my filter gear to one of my friends so was looking around for stuff to play with. All I really had was his [...]]]>

This is one of the last afterdark shots from South County Dublin this evening. I haven’t really done anything like this before. I don’t think I’ve even tried. I’d given some of my filter gear to one of my friends so was looking around for stuff to play with. All I really had was his coffee and my mobile phone, plus the flash and the ledge we left everything on. Initially I did the phone on its own, and then I did the coffee and then I decided to see if they went together. I wound up getting all sorts of things wrong, like, you know, if the phone is black, make sure some light falls on it if you can’t get a flash around to one side (there was a sheer drop…). I guess all that’s missing is a magazine

Mostly when I think of people doing product type photography, it seems to involve light boxes. I keep meaning to do something about it but I can never think of what to actually photograph…I’m done with jewellery for a while, and other stuff…it never really seems to talk to me. I could, I suppose, take a jar of jam and throw it in the lightbox but it’d never tell a story…I think this does in a way.