This was taken at a kite competition a few weeks ago. When I say that it was freezing cold if you came off the water, I’m not joking. Her hands were freezing cold. Hence the image. This sucked in colour; worked a lot better in [...]]]> I apologise for the lack of updates (ish) lately. Been busy.

This was taken at a kite competition a few weeks ago. When I say that it was freezing cold if you came off the water, I’m not joking. Her hands were freezing cold. Hence the image. This sucked in colour; worked a lot better in black and white, so I can’t complain as I blew out the back highlights in exposing correctly for the neoprene and shadowed faces.

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In other news, my camera is gone to camera hospital somewhere in Hertfordshire. It’s a 40D and I have had it about 15 months. On Sunday, the shutter started giving problems – not responding 20% of the time. It got very frustrating inside 10 minutes to be honest.

It arrived at a Canon service centre in the UK this morning after I wound up jumping through some complicated hoops including An Post, the Irish postal service, and DHL yesterday afternoon and I am told that for a consideration of X amount of money, the camera will be repaired along with a couple of problems on my flash which I sent back as well because it too had been causing trouble. As I don’t do a huge amount of flash photography, that hadn’t been so urgent, but since I was packing stuff up, I thought, two birds, etc, etc.

I’m not altogether happy about this. It’s my second 40D as people who know me are well aware and while this one isn’t yet dead, it’s a bit not nice to have a second one in hospital. I have to say that in fairness, the service agents have been exceptionally helpful on this occasion (tip – bypass ISS).

Anyway, the net impact of that is that I miss the next photowalk which is in Clare, boo, and am hoping that the volcano doesn’t delay the return of my baby to me.

I like this one. I like a lot of the other shots I took yesterday as well but this one is the (current) standy out one.

Theoretically I was going [...]]]> The May bank holiday saw the kitesurfing bandwagon roll into Rosses Point, a beach I’ve visited, oh, once in my life as far as I can remember.

I like this one. I like a lot of the other shots I took yesterday as well but this one is the (current) standy out one.

Theoretically I was going to write a whole lot about all this but frankly, it’s easy. You point camera at kitesurfer, more or less into sun. You push the curve to the right. You drop a black and white layer down on top and then you get rid of the extraneous space on the side.

Later, you wonder about adding a warming photofilter. Then, 50 odd photographs later, you forget. The boys, for the most part, were complaining about scrappy conditions. The wind on high seemed to be lighter than the wind on low. Not one kitesurfer said anything other than “the wind is lousy”. Hence, not too many of them were doing aerial acrobatics. I was kind of glad I hadn’t lugged the 500mm zoom around with me. It’s nice being able to lift the camera by yourself, really.

The beach itself is really nice and I took a photographs for the purposes of the [I don't want to look at it now] ebook I’m putting together with pictures of Irish beaches in it [no seriously]. It wasn’t what you’d call busy either.

Anyway, 200 ISO so that I could up the shutter speed which left me with horrendously high shutter speeds on occasion. I mean, I don’t often see the 8000.

I’m starting to wonder about the 40D. Possibly I should have started to wonder about it before now. Its colours are very definitely flat. I seem to spend a lot more time postprocessing photograph jpgs than I did on the 350D and no RAW leaves the world without quite a bit of colour correction. That doesn’t matter so much if you’ve taken 80 photographs. On the days that you’ve taken more than 300 (like yesterday) and more than 1000 (regularly on a day in Dublin), that sucks.

I may start investigating the 7D.

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.

There’s nothing very pyrotechnical about this photograph and in that, I think lies the reason I like it so much. It’s easy to make a kitesurfing photograph look great when your kitesurfer is dangling upside down in the middle of a newstyle trick. And once you have bells and whistles like autofocus and continuous shooting [...]]]>

There’s nothing very pyrotechnical about this photograph and in that, I think lies the reason I like it so much. It’s easy to make a kitesurfing photograph look great when your kitesurfer is dangling upside down in the middle of a newstyle trick. And once you have bells and whistles like autofocus and continuous shooting they are not necessarily that hard to shoot.

The mundane can be a lot harder to make interesting and maybe this is not so interesting; but for some reason I’ve always loved it.

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Links for today (sorry – they are late)

Golden Gate Bridge at Sunset by Kevin Dobler.

Yellowstone West Thumb and Canyon revisited by Laurie

Playing with High Noon – Moose Peterson

Boards by milou

The Eagle Hunters – Art Wolfe

and

PHOTOWALK.IE – if you are based in Ireland you really should give a look at this.

I’m not sure what to say about this. It was taken with a 350D and a 70-300mm Sigma zoom. I’ve always liked Sigma lenses. There was a lot of haze for this photograph.

I have this yen to do lots of black skies but it’s difficult to find a balance when you have a volcanic mountain [...]]]>

I’m not sure what to say about this. It was taken with a 350D and a 70-300mm Sigma zoom. I’ve always liked Sigma lenses. There was a lot of haze for this photograph.

I have this yen to do lots of black skies but it’s difficult to find a balance when you have a volcanic mountain to deal with. Not that it’s any excuse. Sometimes I’m just looking to create an atmosphere.

I’m back to the Canary Islands in about 2 weeks’ time all going according to plan. I do want to have some fun there with the travel photography; I hope I get a lot more clear blue skies. Given some fortune I could get some startling things. I’m looking forward to it.