Monthly Archives: May 2011
On To The Next Project
I have had a bit of a lull in terms of my own photography for the last while. Or more precisely: I haven’t taken a decent shot ever since before my last college exam exactly two weeks ago. At least not with marky Mark but only with the iPhone.
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Malahide |
However, it is time to start on the next project. And luckily The Friends of Analog Photography are onto the next thing. After the success of our 24 themes project we are now doing another group exercise which will hopefully culminate in yet another visually striking group display.
The subject this time is to document a whole month by taking a picture a day. We are less prescriptive with format and film, so that the participants can choose between b/w and colour, 35mm and 120mm, and landscape or portrait orientation. The only stipulation is to shoot film and to do so once a day.
Seeing that I still had a heap of b/w films sitting in my fridge, I have opted for monochrome. While remodeling my study I happened upon my cheap little Lomo camera, given to me by my photographer friend Karl Burke as a thank you for assisting him on a shoot. It’s a multilens affair like this, and I had not played with it so far, so here is my chance. However, chance it I do not want to. So I am concurrently shooting with my trusted old Canon eos 500n. That essentially means two images a day. No, I am not trying to cheat. (And if I were, I’d be clever enough not to announce it publicly!) Once the rolls are processed, I’ll see which film is usable.
Interestingly, I have found it quite hard so far to take my daily shots. I found it much easier to work through the 24 themes of our first analog project. This time it is all wide open – and I find it hard to apply myself to the hunt for an image without any chance of preparing in my head what I want to document that particular day. Cos look in the future I cannot. (What is it with me and jumbled up word order today???)
I am sure there is a lesson in that. What it is, I don’t know – but, hey, any lesson is good, I guess! Updates, soon!
Gimping
3, 2, 1… launched!!!
If photography is about seeing, then ultimately it is also about letting see. What point is there to photography if you do not share with others what you have captured? And yet it is nerve-wrecking to put the fruits of your labours out there and open yourself up to commentary and criticism. Not to mention the stress of putting on and organising for an exhibition.
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Photoworks exhibition |
What you see up there is a panorama shot I took last night at the opening of the GCD 2nd year students’ end of year show. Taken very quickly on iPhone before the start of the evening’s proceeding, so you get a little idea of what was on show.
The day was busy. It started at 10 am with the hanging of the pictures – delayed by a day because of the current visit of the English Queen in Ireland (which is upsetting traffic in Dublin). With 22 contributors to this group show, there were a lot of pictures to be hung. I helped out for half the day and got about four different projects up on the wall.
The show started officially at 7 pm, but even before that there were people milling around, checking what the photographers had produced. The response to the exhibition was phenomenal – in my opinion. It got to the point where there were so many people in the room that you could hardly see the images on the wall. But hey, that is not a reason to complain but to be pleased with. And I think it is safe to say that the opening night was a great success.
An exhibition is always exciting, and this was the third show I have taken part in. But what really makes it special for me is when my friends and family follow my invites and attend a show. I was very happy to welcome several friends yesterday – so thank you for turning up and showing me your support that way! It is much appreciated – it is what I need, what I thrive on and what motivates me to go on with photography. If it wasn’t for your feedback, it wouldn’t make any sense for me!
So if you haven’t been there yet, hurry on down! The show displays a wide variety of photographic subject matter and techniques. So diverse that you actually need a lot of time to take it all in. Check it out! It is open all day today in La Catedral Studios, St Augustine Street, off Thomas Street, Dublin 2. Leave us a comment so we know you have been there!
Organising and Exhibiting
Department of the Interior
Hello my dears,
have you been missing me? There has been a bit of a delay, partly due to my last exam which I had to sit on Friday afternoon (media law – boy, am I glad that is over!), partly because Blogger decided to have some kind of unannounced outage for a few days which gave me a bit of a fright. Plus, and most majorly, thanks to my laptop packing it in for good. But since yours truly is using social networking to her advantage, it was not before long that replacements were offered and accepted. I am online again on a replacement laptop, widening my horizon by working with ubuntu and Gimp instead of my usual Windows and Photoshop. And a swish new PC is already ordered and will hopefully arrive here in the next few days.
In the meantime, I have turned all domestic. With the pressure of the exam gone I had to return some of my attention to my home. Yep, that meant cleaning, tidying and organising. And when everything was done, I pulled out a wide-angle lens to document the rather unusual state of tidyness and cleanliness for posterity.
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This is an extreme example (of tidyness as much as wide-angle *haha*) with the focal length down to 12mm and an exposure of six seconds at f11. I had no speedlite or proper lights and needed to use ambient lighting as it was.
My oh my, my drawing room looks like a ball room, including a large dancefloor at the front. Believe me, it is not that large, but wide-angle distortion is the buzzword here, stretching the corners upwards and distorting the objects, plus creating a vignette. I love producing mistakes like this one, because they make me find out what I did wrong and how I can avoid them in the future. My hunch is, that I fell victim of optical vignetting here, i.e. I used an f-stop that is too small and therefore did not have the light reaching the corners of the sensor to register it during my 6 second exposure. That could’ve easily been avoided because one of the advantages of wide-angle lenses is that they tend to have greater dof, i.e. I could’ve shot with a smaller aperture no problem (especially as I was using a tripod, anyway).
On the other hand, the unintended vignetting creates an aesthetic effect that references the wide-angle distortion, even intensifies it. Let’s just say it was all intentional. (Yeah, right.)
In any case, I love interior photography. (It certainly is my justification for indulging in interior design magazines. Sounds a bit cooler than admitting that you are a luxury housewife who likes to look at lust over other people’s beautiful and styled homes…) I often wonder how the photographers take their images for all the relevant magazines out there – what lenses are they using, what kind of lighting set-ups, do they only use available light, how do they deal with the mixture of daylight and ambient light then. Well, there’s a summer project for me – find an Irish interior photographer and get an internship or assistance with him/her.
Right, back to tidying up, then.
Dry Runs
Semester Over – busybusybusy
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Not for real, really! |
Because it’s Worth it
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*graaah* I have a spot. On my lens! |