Peoples Photography is over for another year and it was a great weekend. I met lots of wonderful people who chatted to me about my photos and some people even liked my photos enough to buy some prints. I will upload low-res versions of the photos later this week for those who couldn’t make it to Dublin over the weekend.
A big thank you to everyone that I met over the weekend and especially thanks to those who helped me before and after the event. I’m already looking forward to and planning things for Peoples Photography 2011.
I’m almost ready for Peoples Photography 2010. Good thing too considering it’s this weekend. The last batch of prints arrived back from the printers today and over the weekend I settled on the technique I will use to hang the photos. I decided to go with a hopefully quicker approach, pre-hanging the mounted photos on black “webbing”. Then I can fold up the display the night before and each morning just unfold it, hang it on the railings and secure the bottom tightly. I’ve seen similar work well for other exhibitors on other years so fingers crossed it works for me.
Tonight the mounting process starts and while time consuming is at least achievable with effort. Then I will select the final 20 to display and the backups to keep in the box in case I get bored of what I have on display. Ok, so maybe I’m not as ready as I could have been if I’d started earlier but I’ll get there before Saturday, fingers crossed.
One evening during my vacation I took a hike along the trail around Signal Hill and The Battery in St Johns. The view is amazing and well worth the effort. The city can be seen through The Narrows with Cabot Tower sitting on top of the hill.
I’m just back again from this years trip to Newfoundland in Canada. I didnt get to spend as much time taking photos as I usually do since we were busy trying to organise our wedding next year but I was lucky to get out with my camera for on the two best days of the trip. A weekend spent in Trinity itself was great fun and the town is a beautiful location in the early morning. In St Johns itself I went for a hike around Signal Hill and the view is amazing though the light was hazy and the time of day meant the sun was in most of the best shots, it’s another location that needs an early morning start so I’ll try to visit it again next year. I still have to go through the images but hopefully I’ll have a couple of nice ones to post here.
This photo is from Marlfield church and graveyard outside Clonmel. It’s my old family graveyard but has become very overgrown lately with only a few families maintaining their plots while the older parts of the graveyard are reclaimed by nature. Thats a shame since lots of effort went into cleaning up and restoring the place 20 years ago.
This cross jumps out because someone is making small efforts to maintain the area around it, yet there is very little information about the people whose grave this marks. All it lists is Mrs Fahey & Son Tom. There is no date visible, no ages, not even a first name for Mrs Fahey. The fact that the text is still so clear and the wooden cross has not decayed indicates it’s relatively recent compared to the rest of the graveyard.
I was recently lucky enough to win an iPhone 3GS. Just in time to replace my old 3G which was dying under the demands of the new iOS 4 I had foolishly upgraded to. One of the things I did not like about the 3G was the camera but the 3GS has a much improved 3 megapixels, auto focus and a touch focus screen.
One day last week while walking to the Luas tram home I spotted this flower head dropped in the tram lines and it seemed like the most interesting thing around to try and photograph with the iPhone. I didn’t put it on the computer. I downloaded some photo apps on the iPhone and just used those to tweak the picture. It’s still hard to judge the image on a small screen but I was pretty pleased with the result and how easy it all was. It’s not perfect but it’s a camera phone. The unfortunate thing is the camera in the 3GS is so much better than the 3G I now really want the iPhone 4 with its 5 megapixel camera 
I got my first set of prints for Peoples Photography 2010. God I’ve got lots of work to do. I think I selected the incorrect dimensions with the online printer which didnt help the cropping but leaving that aside only one image seemed acceptable straight away. Two or three others are close and the rest are probably beyond any hope of making it into the exhibition.
Last weekend I went to the annual Street Performance World Championship in Merrion Sq. A weekend of street performers from around the world competing for votes, and of course cash from the audience. One of the stages was in front of Government Buildings and I was there watching Dr Kaboom set off fireballs within sight of the Taoiseachs office. I bet when Cowen dreams of fireballs outside his office he doesn’t picture the Gardai standing by and applauding, at least not yet.
Peoples Photography 2010 is on, 28th/29th of August. I should be taking part again. I’ve got lots of printing to do and as a result of all the business travel I’ve done this year I don’t have enough new photos. I think I’ll have to reuse some from last year to fill out the numbers. Still hopefully it will be a success and even if it’s just a nice weekend sitting in the sun and chatting to people that will make it worth while.
I finally got out to take some photos over the June bank holiday weekend. The Bloom Festival, the Maritime Festival and the Dublin Flora Womens Mini Marathon. Despite the rain there was a huge supply of bottled water waiting for the finishers.