For Pooch

My sister has been the person that I have photographed the most. I didn't know much at all when I got my first camera; barely understanding the relationship between shutter and aperture, so she should be commended for her patience while I forced her to be my learning subject. Recently she complained that there was not one photograph of her on the blog. She started to become jealous of all the mannequins that I photographed the past few months, calling them "porcelain faced bitches".

So, Pooch. This post is for you. I hope your happy now.

Visiting Berlin

I spent the last week in Berlin visiting friends, attending a couple of job interviews and sitting beside Liam Neeson for about an hour in a pub (he likes Tayto more than Walkers), so I didn't have as much time as I liked to take photographs. The weather was also cold, the city full of snow and the footpaths icy.

I came pretty close to breaking my camera too. I had just taken it out of my backpack to take a photograph and hung it around my neck as I walked ahead when I suddenly slipped with both my legs disappearing from underneath me. As I was in mid air I had a choice; Save my camera or my back?.... save my camera or my back?.... save my camera or my back? Naturally I held onto my camera tight with both hands and let my back take the force of the impact. I feel lucky because had the camera still been in my backpack, I'm sure something would've broke. Hopefully now I just have to wait a couple of weeks at the most for my back, neck and shoulders to fully heal and then I'll return to my super fit self again.

Quiet But Productive

I haven't posted much lately for a couple of reasons. Apart from landscapes, I can't see much else to photograph here in Sligo. When I do want to explore the countryside I lack the transport to get anywhere and when I do have the transport, its usually at the wrong time of day when the light is bad. I have a bicycle (which needs to be mended) so I should get a few pics eventually. Also I will be visiting Berlin again next week for a few days. I hear that it's nice and frosty there. Plenty of snow, frozen lakes, interesting places, I'm sure I will be back with some images to share.

The other reason that I haven't been posting much as of late is because I have my own exhibition to get ready. It will consist of nine images of the mannequin series that I posted earlier in this blog. All of the prints are done (nice and big at 12 x 18 inch) and now I need to decide how best to mount and hang them onto the wall. It will be my first exhibition so I'm a bit nervous at how it will turn out, but of course I know that it's a great opportunity for me to gain some experience and perhaps make a name for myself. Hopefully from there I can expand on other projects I've been planning and have more and more exhibitions in the future with lots of wealth and fame to follow. Or it could turn out to be the only exhibition I ever do. Who knows? Not me...

Exciting times? Oh indeed!

The exhibition will be held in Sligo in the Artmart studios. Opening night will be Saturday 13th March with the show running the whole of the following week. More information will be posted closer to the date.

Journey Through The Evening

I went for a drive the other day with some of my family to nowhere in particular. We ventured as far as Donegal and drove along the outskirts of Sligo. Nothing really caught my eye that would've made me cry "stop the car!" so I was happy enough to just sit in the back seat and wait for a couple of moments that appealed to me...

Publication

This image of mine was chosen as the front and back cover illustration for the poetry anthology of the 2009/10 NUI Galway MA in Writing class, 'Measured Words'.

Frozen Stiff

Most of the country is still covered in snow making it difficult for me to go anywhere and take some photographs so I have to be imaginative enough to take some new ones around my house instead. I'm lucky that where I live is so open. I'm surrounded by fields! It's nice to have the opportunity to photograph white landscapes instead of the usual green. Change is good I suppose no matter how damn cold it gets! I'm sure the novelty of it all will wear off pretty soon though. Pretty soon indeed.....

After trekking through the fields earlier today I saw something blue popping out from the snow in my back garden. I pulled it a little and discovered this jacket frozen stiff just like the towels that were on the clothes line the night before that I banged my head against. It was not so painful as unexpected and confusing.

Snow Snow Snow!!!

Light snowflakes started to fall the morning I left Berlin and I was waiting four days back home in Ireland to see them again.

Now that I am again surrounded by fields and the little river that flows behind my family home, I decided to step out of the house early to take a few pics. I don't think I have ever walked on snow as solid as this before. It took a little effort to even make a footprint and a little bit more effort to stay out and fight the cold. When I did return inside all I thought of is would I ever get some feeling back in my toes?

I did!

Leaving Berlin

I have returned home to Ireland for the festive period and a little while after. It could be a couple of months until I am back living there so I hope to work on some little projects that I've been thinking about lately.

For now, I give you the last photo I took of Berlin during my stay.

A Christmas Fun Fair

Well I haven't calibrated my monitor yet and it looks like I won't get it done very soon, so I decided to post up some of the pics I took the last couple of weeks. As it is so close to Christmas, there are alot of colourful lights in the city. This is no more evident than in the huge fun fair near Alexanderplatz.

Not Very Active?

Okay, it has been two weeks since my last post and you (if there are people following this) may be thinking that I have stopped taking photographs or have been uninspired. Well the answer is that I HAVE been taking photographs and I AM happy with them. It's just that I have only recently started to do something that I have been putting off for quite awhile, which is to calibrate my computer monitor. Last week I printed a few images and well, they appear different to what I see on my screen. Slightly darker, colours a bit different, my worst fears were realised.

Hopefully I will have the monitor calibrated in the next few days so that I can choose and and do my usual ever so gentle post production on the ones I like. And hopefully all the images that I have taken the past two and a half years won't look drastically different and to my unliking. Otherwise, y'know...... aaggghhhhhhh!!!!!!

Autumn Collection

This series of shots were taken in a northern suburb of Berlin called Buch. It is not often that I have seen such open landscapes here. It was nice, and reminded me a little of Ireland too. This was one huge field which had a lake at one end and row after row of corn plants at the other. I tried to capture the feeling of autumn here, with its desaturated brown colours, grey skies, bare trees and fallen leaves.

Window Displays

Just a couple more pics that I took while taking a stroll along a busy shopping street.

An Evening At Potsdamer Platz

The summer was so beautiful here in Berlin. Daylight until 10pm, sandals and shorts, pale Irish skin getting burnt, aaaaaaaah it was so great. Now? Cold, wet, bleak and it gets dark at 4.30pm. These shots were taken a couple of weeks ago before the clocks went back one hour. Nice autumn evening sky though.

I know I know I know...

... More mannequins, yes I know. I'm trying to find better images as I feel that too many of them from this series are just too bland and uninteresting. Hopefully at the end I will have a collection of about 10-15 errrrrr un-bland and interesting images possibly for exposure at an exhibition.

20th Anniversary Berlin Mauer Fall

November 9th marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. There were many events taking place all around the city to celebrate the occasion, some of which I have documented here.

Giant dominoes lining a segment of the route of the Berlin Wall were toppled late in the evening. This was billed as a metaphor for the way that the real wall came down twenty years before.

During the day several people dressed as angels stood on rooftops seemingly watching down on the people of the city.

Earlier in the day an event called The Berlin Wall Of Sound took place in Mauer Park (wall park). This consisted of a 200 meter long stretch of guitarists and bassists playing to the instructions of the conductor.

In Mauer Park as well as the Berlin Wall Of Sound there was a line of photographs exhibited, some of which were taken before the wall came down.

Dublin

This is just a selection of what I feel are my best photographs whilst living in Co. Dublin from September 2008 - June 2009. I wasn't particularly inspired while living there but am happy to show what are my best landscape shots.

(Note that these were taken during a time when I added black borders to a number of my photographs. As I was shooting in JPEG I do not have the original RAW file and so now I cannot remove them.)