Photowalk.ie

Photowalk.ie is a great website where people get together to organise photowalks (no shit), where a group of people will set off on a loosely determined course with cameras in hand.

Having already been on one photowalk with a few of the heads from the boards.ie photography forum, and due to the fact that they had organised one literally on my doorstep, I packed up my gear including my spanky new tripod, and off I went.

As usual there were folks of all levels there, which is great as a beginner as people are normally more than happy to chat and offer advice where appropriate. I re-took some of the photos that I previously posted using my mini tripod, as I was interested to see what they would turn out like using 1) A full-size tripod and 2) some manual settings.

Bell X-1 @Google

The thoroughly excellent Bell X-1 (The band, not the first aircraft to break the speed of sound, although I suppose that too was somewhat excellent) dropped into Google a few months back to play a lunchtime set for Musicians@Google.

By now I hope I'm getting an idea for what makes a good photo, or at least what may look interesting, so I perched myself up at the front row for both the sound check and the gig itself and took a few shots.

After each gig, the organisers of Musicians@Google in Dublin arrange for a picture of the artist to be hung outside the venue, along with a guitar that everyone so far has signed. Since getting 3 band members into one shot was next to impossible, I decided to have a go at making a montage photo out of a single shots of all 3. The outcome, for better or for worse, can be seen below!

Aviva Stadium

The Aviva Stadium is pretty impressive to look at at the best of times, but when there is a game on, it takes on a whole new life. I took a wander down during the most recent Ireland home game to get a few shots and get some more practice using the mini-tripod.

We're All Goin' on a - Summer Holiday

So far, all of my photo taking opportunities have been within the confines of the Emerald Isle, so it was with great expectation that I packed up my camera and headed off to Portugal. The south coast and Algarve region has some pretty spectacular scenery and great beaches, so I was eager to get some sweeping postcard-style landscape shots while I was there.

Unfortunately, this was not the case, and I soon learned that no matter how spectacular a view is, getting the view that your eye sees into the frame of a camera is no mean feat, and is probably best left to people with a bit more of an idea as to what they are doing.

Ever determined, I still managed to take a few decent shots which are arranged for your viewing pleasure below. Perhaps it's a stage that everyone goes through, but I'm finding a bit of a niche (perhaps thast should be 'rut') in night scenes - lights seem make everything a bit more interesting. They do to me anyway.

The Liffey By Night

I mentioned a while back that, after having some trouble with low light shots coming out blurred, I had bought a Gorillapod. Well, the day (night) finally came for me to try it out properly and having threatened to take some pictures along the river liffey after dark for a while, I eventually made it down.

I found that shooting at night presents both positives and negatives. The positives are that the actual subject of the shots is usually nicely lit up, in some instances using some pretty funky colours which can look great when shot against a dark sky, and the reflection from the water adds a whole separate feature. Also, it gives an opportunity to get some pictures of places that would normally be packed with people while they are eerily quiet.

Negatively, I found that it can be difficult to find the right settings ('right' may be subjective here) to shoot with - taking two pictures of the same object a few seconds apart with different settings can result in to extremely different pictures, one with a more white-blue light making everything look cold, while the next could have a warmer sepia-like tint to it. I'm not sure which I prefer yet.

I also got to grips with longer-exposure pictures which, when used at a river setting, can give some interesting effects where the flowing water appears motion-blurred, while the subject of the shot remains still.Again, this can go either way depending on the actual subject of the photo but it was interesting to play around with.

Galway Vs Kilkenny - All Ireland SHC Leinster Final

Just a quick update for this one - tried my hand at some more sports photography by bringing my camera to Croke Park for the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Leinster Final (what a mouthful).

This was the second time I tried to take pics at a hurling game, but unlike rugby or football, the ball (made of cork, wrapped in leather) moves at a ridiculously fast pace (upwards of 150 kmh, according to Wikipedia), meaning getting an action shot takes a fast eye and an even faster lens.

I stuck to the tried and tested method of taking photos of set pieces such as penalties and frees, as well as one or two of the various folks that you come across at this type of game.

Boards.ie Photowalk

I've always been a bit of a lurker on Boards.ie, an Irish message board site covering pretty much every topic under the sun, but never really interacted with it that much. I decided it was time to get more involved with the photography board, and noticed that they were organising a photowalk based around the area I live.

There were about 7 or 8 people in all, ranging from folks with point and shoot pocket cameras to the more serious intercontinental-lens-wielding semi-pro's. The walk took us from Ballsbridge down along the river Dodder, past the new Aviva Stadium and towards the Grand Canal Dock area. I definitely took the most amount of photos from any one event but, as always, there are only a few keepers or ones that I actually felt were good. I also experimented a bit with the Manual Focus settings on my camera which was surprisingly easy to use.