Self-portrait

Christ, I did not realise it’d been an entire month (give or take) since I last posted. The mortification…

Anyway, going through a bit of a drought lately. There’s been no sunshine worth taking the camera out in, and even if there had I’ve no idea what to go and shoot. Not good excuses, but there you go.

In the lack of anything else to point the camera at, I had a go at playing with shallow DOF and shooting a self-portrait. The photo isn’t very interesting but I played around with the post-processing to see what I could do.

More to follow, in less than a month (hopefully).

Mutton Island

It rained today, pretty much for the entire day. It’s still raining now. I guess it’s a bit of a wake-up call to remind us that yes, this is Ireland, and yes, the summer — such as it was — is almost over.

It feels like the weather is saying “Time to get back to business, fuckers.” Possibly, it’s cracking its knuckles at the time.

However, some vestiges of summer remain. For instance, it stopped raining quite so heavily for an hour or two, allowing me to get out of the house for a while and go for a stroll. I got wet, true, but not very wet.

With the wind blasting me in the face and that not-too-annoying misty sort of rain wafting about the sky, I decided it would be a grand day to walk out the Mutton Island Causeway. It made sense at the time.

Pride

Shot from the Galway Gay Pride parade this afternoon.

I’m hungover — still — from last night, and I think I need the cure.

On The River

Having spent the day in the mind-numbing boredom of a training course at work, I was only dying to get out of the house this evening. Taking my half-banjaxed bike — I think the rear derailleur is fucked; at the least, it’s not working properly — I headed towards the university with the intention of getting some photographs.

That was a complete failure, but a bit of an adventurous spirit led me to follow a path that went upriver, somewhere I’d never been before. I’m glad I went, because it led me out towards Daingean (I think), along the student villages of NUIG and out by their sportsgrounds. I didn’t realise NUIG’s campus was that big.

Out towards the end of my ride I spotted an old rundown manor house across the river, all overgrown and perched neatly on the eastern bank of the river. I stopped to take a few photos of it (poorly, it must be said… a zoom lens is my next planned purchase) when this swan floated upstream right in front of me. He (she?) seemed happy to hang around while I took about five million shots, none of which I was really happy with. It was only when I switched to manual focus that I really started getting anything half-decent.

Lesson learned — autofocus is not always better.

I must confess that I have a somewhat sick and twisted appreciation for things sometimes. One of these is an interest in the ugly side of the urban sprawls most of us live in… the alleyways full of bins and the unpainted sides of buildings, the sides that don’t face the street.

In most other countries, you’ll often find sudden bursts of colour and art in these places: graffiti and the like. In Ireland? Well, I think Mr Dan Deacon summarised it brilliantly when I saw him a couple of years back, on his first circuit of Ireland:

“You guys are great, you Irish. I was playing a gig in Cork last night, and while I was in the city, I saw this construction site where they were building the first really tall building in Cork. And I saw this bit of graffiti on the, y’know, the hoardings around the site. It said, ‘Skyscrapers are gay.’ You wouldn’t get that in the US…”

This basically sums up the lofty heights of Irish graffiti. You don’t find the little bursts of originality in our hidden places. At the same time, I still find myself with a fascination for dereliction, rough grey concrete and rusted metal.

I went for a stroll this evening while the rain was away, and had a wander through some alleys and driveways. Swamped in a sea of shitty tags and penis diagrams, was this.

Hiding

I was down home in Waterford at the weekend for the Spraoi Festival, with grand intentions of getting some good photos. Unfortunately, that plan didn’t really work out — with the crowds of kids and families at most of the acts, I felt pretty bad about pushing to the front to take clear pictures. Never mind, I thought, I’ll just get cans. Everybody was happy.

My brother and his girlfriend were just home from 2 weeks in Majorca, and were delighted to be able to palm my wench of a godchild off on Granny and Granddad for a night or two. While she was playing, I tried to get a few candid shots of her, but as soon as the camera came out it was like a little model was in the room, posing away. I didn’t manage to get any half-decent shots that didn’t contain a fake-as-shite grin, but — as she was only too happy to act up for the camera — I did manage to get this shot of her hiding behind her teddy bear, Benny.

Little Photographer

Yesterday evening, after a day of wandering around and checking out the Arts Fest vibe, I thought I needed a bit of relaxation. I took myself about two hundred yards down the road to soak in the sunshine accompanied by the chilled out dub, soul, funk, and other of the Mr Whippy Soundsystem.
It was a fantastic evening, and I can’t remember the last time I got so much enjoyment out of free entertainment. In fact, having picked up a few cans to go with it, you could say I enjoyed it a little too much. (For the record, I think the second six-pack was probably a bad idea.)

This wee beggar was running around taking photos and enjoying the music as much as the rest of us, so when he pointed his camera at me, I felt it only fair to return the favour.

The Streets of Galway

Um, I kinda meant to post a few days ago but never really got around to it. I’d blame it on being busy, but it’s really just laziness. I need to make more of an effort to post halfway regularly.

This photo is particularly important to me as it was taken on my shiny new lens, which arrived today. It’s nothing swanky, probably the cheapest lens you can buy — the famous ‘nifty fifty’, 50mm f/1.8 — but I’m fairly excited about it as it’ll allow me to take much better portrait shots and fill the background with nice bokeh. Also, the wider aperture will come in handy in general situations, seeing as Ireland’s normal light level is somewhere between ‘dungeon’ and ‘wardrobe’.

I also just like the subject matter of this photo — I’ve been meaning to get more practise at street photography, and strolling up Shop St. today I noticed a pregnant girl having her bump henna-tattooed. It was a nice little scene, so I took a couple of shots of it. I didn’t trust myself to do much in the way of post-processing, so I tried to leave it as natural as possible. It’s a little overexposed, but I like it nonetheless.

I reckon I’ll be getting more street photography done over the next week or so, seeing as the Galway Arts Festival is on. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Bon Iver in the Big Top on Thursday night.

Oh, also — thanks to White Rabbit for the shout-out. You need to show us some of your photos sometime

Ganesh and Ipod

Ganesh and Ipod, originally uploaded by Landigan.

So right, how to explain this one? The photography group in work has a challenge on photographs of reflections this month, and I was looking around the apartment today for something that would reflect. One of the objects I ended up using was my iPod Touch.

This particular photo doesn’t have the reflection in it (in fact, the iPod in general didn’t reflect very well) but I liked it enough to give it a quick processing and upload it.

Voila, Lord Ganesha, Lord of Beginnings and patron saint of arts and sciences, in a black and white photograph (art!) sitting on one of the most modern forms of consumer electronics (science!).

This is actually a very meaningful and deep photo, you see?

Abhann na mBradán

Abhann na mBradan Building, originally uploaded by Landigan.

This picture of the new Abhann na mBradán (‘Salmon River’ in Irish) building was taken a week or two ago from the window of my new apartment.

While the light outside was pretty much perfect, I didn’t really manage to capture it in any way that did it justice. However, I am happy enough with the balance of light and dark in this shot to post it up.

Bonus points for anyone who figures out exactly where I live using this photo…