Yesterday when walking along the Liffey towards the O2 on what was a scorcher of a day here in Dublin with hardly a cloud in sight against a perfect blue sky, I noticed in the distance that the Poolbeg chimneys or simply ‘the chimneys’ as I call them, were almost completely engulfed in a mist that was pouring in from the sea. The wind was quite strong and the mist was moving quickly so as soon as I got back to my place, I grabbed the camera and drove over to Sandymount beach to try and get something decent.
Here are the results.
To see them nice and big click here on on either of the images above. All prints can also be ordered within the slideshows.
Sneak peeks – that’s all I seem to be blogging recently but trust me, as soon as I have more time I’ll post a real wedding. Mark my words.
Until then, here is a little taster from Carrie and Thomas’s wedding which I shot back on the 5th June in Trinity College, Dublin. It was like no wedding I have been to before. It was truly posh and I mean that in only the nicest possible way. I described it to a friend as “like a royal wedding”.
I’ll save the reasons why for a later post otherwise I’d have a mighty long essay in front of me – and if you haven’t noticed, the photographs come easier to me than the words.
Oh, one thing that I will mention is that Carrie and Thomas have a great sense of humour and thought it would be quite funny to try and recreate their favourite painting when we got to Number 10 Ormond Quay – their reception venue. The painting is The Arnolfini Portrait from 1434 in which the artist Jan van Eyck painted Giovanni and his wife in-front of a large convex mirror. In the painting the artist can be seen in the mirror. Number 10 has several of these mirrors and Carrie and Thomas thought that it’d be cool to recreate and therefore I’d be captured in the mirror too. By pure and utter chance we even found a dog – in the form of a solid brass and incredibly heavy doorstop. Win! I’ve included both my version and the original below.
So, for now – here’s a taster of what was a superb wedding!
Thanks to Carrie and Thomas for having me on what I feel was a very privileged wedding to be at. It certainly felt pretty special from where I was standing.
As a photographer that is. Yes, today is a special day. I got to shoot my first gig. After an inquiry a couple of weeks back to Whelans they were kind enough to offer me along to whatever gig I was interested in shooting. When I saw Crooked Still on the lineup for July I couldn’t believe my luck! I queued up tonight along with the rest of the punters – a right old mix I have to say – and waited patiently and a little nervously to what I knew would be a great show but also for what I hoped would be a successful shoot.
As I went inside I seen that chairs where setup on the ground floor. My instructions had been clear – shoot for the first 3 songs, no flash and most importantly – don’t get in the way of the paying customers. I knew that the chairs would restrict me somewhat and to get in front of them would be breaking the 3rd rule. So I went upstairs for a look, found a spot (and chatted to an excited and very proud bunch of Aoife’s, the lead singers, relatives) and waited for the band to take centre stage.
I came back downstairs for a closer vantage point after the first song and hope I managed to stay out of the way. After a while it was time to put the camera away and just the enjoy music.
What can I say? It was an awesome gig and it was great to get to meet Aoife (Lead vocal) and Gregory (Banjo and poet!) afterwards when I bought a few cd’s from them. You wouldn’t see Bono doing that outside Croker…
Check out the band at http://www.crookedstill.com/ and also on myspace at http://www.myspace.com/crookedstill
Loved it. Thanks Whelans!
EDIT : I also took this video of the band performing the song ‘Tell Her’ from the Still Crooked album.
A long time ago I made a mini globe of Malihide Castle. Ever since then I’ve wanted to recreate something similar in the middle of O’Connell street with the Spire being the primary focus point.
Well, almost a year has passed and between then and now I’ve had a few failed attempts. To create these images you need to be able to take almost perfect 360 degree panoramas – something that I just haven’t been able to completely nail.
So, a couple of weeks ago with my new gigapan system I went into the middle of O’Connell Street and setup my tripod halfway between the spire and the Jim Larkin statue. I took a total of 36 images to get a full panorama.
The trouble was that I could not get these images to stitch together, until last night.
So, after some additional photoshop work to iron out a the minor glitches the O’Connell Street mini globe is finally ready.
Firstly, the field of view is over 180 degrees, 194 to be exact, which means you get a real ‘being there’ impression of just what went on and how many people attended the ceremony.
Secondly and most importantly, this panorama was not the result of some incredible camera worth thousands of pounds or with an amazing fisheye lens. The photographer captured it using just a compact camera, taking 220 individual images at full zoom across the entire 194 degree field of view. He then stitched these images together to create a monster sized image. Because it’s made up of so many zoomed in images the detail is out of this world. (If you haven’t already checked out the link above and zoomed into the image please do so… you’ll be missing the point if you don’t) Part of the reason he was able to do this so easily and stitch the images together so well is because he also used a Gigapan system.
Now for the science bit. The gigapan is platform that you attach your camera to, you tell the system where you want the top let of your panorama to be and then the bottom right. The system then knows exactly how far to space out the individual images that will make up the panorama (based on some simple setup steps) and then starts to take the images for you. It’s a joy to watch. Went you get home, the gigapan software stitches the images together too.
So anyway… I’m ramblining here. The point is, after reading about it and picking my jaw up off the floor I deceided that I’d get one.
I’ve had some dire attempts, the Spire sticking out of the GPO and some sort of half bus, half car monstrosity stands out as being the most comical, but yesterday that all changed.
I went down to Sandymount beach and took 180 degree panorama. It consisted of 72 individual shots. The finished stitched image is 100 megapixels and the detail is incredible.
I’ve just returned to Dublin from a weekend in Derry but that didn’t mean my time with Derry folk was over for the weekend just yet. I was asked to take some photos for the Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company from Derry who where on the final night of their latest production ‘Ripple Affect‘. They’ve been all over Ireland with this show but the last night of the tour had arrived and a good crowd turned up at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght to see what it was all about.
Steve Batts, Co-Artistic Director looks on during rehearsals
Well, it was about the ripple effect, surprisingly enough, of human interaction. The tag line used is ‘What do you do after you have been hugged, or hugged someone?’. The dancers where excellent, blending a mixture of well choreographed dance and improvision. At times funny, at other times moving. Oh, and some cracking music from Lorna, Karen and Joleen McLaughlin – otherwise known as The Henry Girls.
As mentioned, the tour is over now, but you may want to keep an eye on Echo Echo’s website for future shows. Good stuff.
