Anyway, a handful of photographs got out of this trip but I never really looked at the rest in too much detail. Here is Alberto Rondina during one of the heats for the invitational freestyle in Portugal. I enjoyed that week but the wind was [...]]]> I’m slowly working through the back catalogue. It’s a weird experience.

Anyway, a handful of photographs got out of this trip but I never really looked at the rest in too much detail. Here is Alberto Rondina during one of the heats for the invitational freestyle in Portugal. I enjoyed that week but the wind was somewhat limited.

I actuall looking through the archive for other purposes but so much of it is kitesports related…it’s almost scary.

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.

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.

I really haven’t been out taking many kite photographs much for the last year or two, and most of what I have done has been fairly easy for want of a better description with a few key exceptions. This, however, is one of the older photographs, and it dates from about 2007 or 2008 when [...]]]>

I really haven’t been out taking many kite photographs much for the last year or two, and most of what I have done has been fairly easy for want of a better description with a few key exceptions. This, however, is one of the older photographs, and it dates from about 2007 or 2008 when I bought a 10-20 mm lens. The weather was mixed on the day, blazing sunshine interspersed with mad clouds. There weren’t too many kitesurfers out, mainly because there wasn’t too much wind. Francois spent most of the day launching off the outflow pipe on Sutton Beach that day and that’s what allowed me to do things like this.

This is one of my favourite photographs and one of my friends reckons it might be the best photograph I’ve ever taken. I’m not so sure I agree but I have to say that there are things I like about this photograph and it’s one of the few hanging in my house at present. I like the extremes of contrast in it.

I got some great photographs that day mainly because the light was so absolutely fantastic. From a kitesurfing view though, there isn’t much to run around about; there was so little wind.

I’m in the process of looking at putting new portfolios together- this I think will make it in.

This is Sean Murphy yesterday. I was out with a 17-85 – it’s not the usual lens to play with for kite shots but Keel gives you some wide angle options without you necessarily having to go into what was freezing cold water (I am told – I didn’t bother checking it out).

I’ve just had [...]]]>

This is Sean Murphy yesterday. I was out with a 17-85 – it’s not the usual lens to play with for kite shots but Keel gives you some wide angle options without you necessarily having to go into what was freezing cold water (I am told – I didn’t bother checking it out).

I’ve just had a week off which didn’t really work out as planned at all so the photographs are somewhat patchy. Of yesterday’s kite lot, this is – so far – the only one I really like. The weather was abysmal. I’m getting sick of taking pictures of kitesurfers in cloudy cold conditions; in the dark (effectively) yesterday. I could have done with some fill in flash but you need them to be sort of near for that to work, and my flash only goes ETTL when it feels like it. I think there must be a loose contact. When it’s not working properly, the camera refuses to recognise that it’s a Canon 580 EX II and assumes it’s a third party flash so I can’t configure it using the camera. I would prefer to use the camera controls to be honest.

The effective flash range is around 10m anyway, which makes it a bit not reliable for kitesurfers anyway. *shrugs*. There may be some portraits up here later today but first – Ronan has this. Go Ronan.

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.

and

both from December 2007. Amongst my favourite photographs again, I’m not sure why.

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 always liked them for some reason.

They seemed to have so much warmth to them.

as well as toys [...]]]> I can’t remember why, but this lot of photographs was taken a morning before I had some problems with the camera, can’t remember what exactly, because they preceded a break from taking photography. I’m not sure why.

I always liked them for some reason.

They seemed to have so much warmth to them.

as well as toys

I was out last night in town. I’ve mixed feelings. Kyle Tunney and I talked about a Christmas lights trip in January but we never got around to it and I suspect the snow and ice didn’t help. One of the things that I wouldn’t mind doing at some stage – would run it past Kyle but he’s mega busy lately – is hit the town midweek at around 4 in the morning when it’s still dark but there are very few people there and you can really play with long exposures. I found the Four Courts particularly attractive this morning, I must confess.

I don’t exactly know why but I went to the archives today to have a look at old photographs, see if anything struck me in a way that hadn’t first time round. The whole exercise was interesting from a purely self-indulgent point of view. I had a brief conversation about this on twitter with Rory Wallace and Mike Patterson this evening. What it boiled down to was this. I think I was a better photographer 2 years ago than I am now. And I’m not sure why.

Technically I know a lot more now than I did then. I know a lot more about how cameras work, how image processing software works. And in that time I’ve taken a bunch of very, very striking photographs such as the melting ice in the lamplight, a few motor-racing shots,  sunrise in Skerries and a few other bits and pieces. But they are stand out photographs in a falling average in some respects. I know, for example, I got to be particularly choosy about the photographs that got out in the wild – see the early flickr stuff versus the later flickr stuff for example (there are 8000 photographs plus on my flickr account by the way).

I think the problems relate to the kitesurfing above all else. In the last 2 years there are maybe a handful of striking photographs from the kitesurfing, the well known one being the sunset kiteloop, and the other key one being Francois Colussi/Jeanie Johnson. Possibly I need to go back to scratch and start over with them. Or possibly it’s just the weather. Difficult to say.

I have been thinking about photography in general lately. Mainly because I’ve been looking for something to shoot, something special and different. I really don’t have any excuse, not the sort of excuses I had 3 or 4 years ago. I want to shoot macro? There is a 2.8 100mm macro lens in the bag. Play with flash? 580 Speedlite II although the last time I tried to use it wasn’t working properly. Must check that out. I have zoom coverage from 10mm up to 500mm even allowing for the fact that Trish has my medium zoom. I know that one of the most important things I should be able to do is dig something special out of the common and ordinary around me and to that end I’ve played with the ornaments on my mantlepiece, the cheap bottles of nailpolish I’ve accumulated and broken wine glasses that I dropped on the floor.

I think really what I need at this stage is a photobuddy to drag me out to do things I harp on about but never do. If the weather cooperates tomorrow I will look at going either north or south…we’ll see.