Well January certainly has been a challenging month both in Rathcoole and across the country. Snow, Ice, Rain, Wind, Frozen Pipes, Unfrozen pipes but no water in them, the list goes on.
Thankfully the images of snow can be consigned to memory for another year or two. Usually we have to wait till February for the bad weather. Maybe we will get summer a bit early this year too. I don’t know what resolutions people made this year, but I’m hoping some of you out there decided to finally get some decent pictures of yourself to put on your Facebook/Bebo/Myspace profiles.
If you did drop me a line via the contact form and we will sort you out in no time.
I recently got a new sofa in my apartment. Of course people wanted to see a picture so I had a little bit of fun and came up with this!
Its amazing what interesting little subjects you can find in your own back yard. Think this little guy was just having a lazy day like most of the rest of us while the sun was out.
Can you believe there is no flickr group dedicated to Rathcoole! Well there is now. I set one up 
This shot was done on a cold March night, amazing how much cars go buy in 30 seconds.
I’m going back to the zoo on Saturday with camera club field trip 
This is an old one from my last visit there. Hope to get more like it.
Ok, I know he is not that scary
This guy came from the Dublin Zoo giftshop. I’m going back to the zoo in 2 weeks time with a photography club to grab some shots and have a fun day out. I was looking at the map for Dublin Zoo yesterday and realised that in my two visits last year I still managed to miss about 33% of what is on show. Hopefully its not snowing then, or I’ll spend the whole trip photographing the snow leopard and the penguins.
Since my last visit, I have added a couple of new lenses and a monopod to my gear collection that I think will come in really useful on the trip. Both where bought with portraits in mind, but most good animal pictures are effectively portraits also.
In the mean time while not photographing much, I have been working on the website. It looks different, it works different. It still needs a bit of polish done this weekend and some background maintanence stuff, but it should be more reliable and faster as well as easier to use.
I Spent the 3rd of January in the Fitzwilliam hotel in Stephens Green.
For 90 minutes I was shooting Ann-Marie, this is the first of the pictures I’ve been able to work on. Pretty happy with the results so far. I had a couple of new lenses with me that I wanted to put through there paces, and they performed exceptionally. When I have a few images done they will be added to the portfolio section.
I took a trip to Dublin Zoo on Monday Morning with 1 film camera 1 digital camera and 3 lenses.
I only ended up using the long zoom outdoors, and the prime lens for the indoor stuff with low light. I got there early in the morning and not much was out. I was disappointed to see that all the Monkeys where nowhere to be seen. A lot of the other animals seemed to be hiding from the cold.
I got some great shots which have been getting lots of attention over on flickr. Mostly the squirrel shots and a couple of a lioness. I’m amazed how brave the squirrels where. The one in the picture was digging and was surprised when he saw me so close, but he didn’t make a move when he did. All in all it was a great set of images from the day for about 4 hours worth of walking
Did a shoot with Paul this morning, this is the first image from the set, I will be working on these images over the coming week.
Paul is a very laid back kind of guy, always smiling and joking and it came across in the images. We where on a shot time schedule (about 90 minutes including a bit of travel)
He has got that whole rap star look going on in this one.
The beautiful lady is called Jess.
I did a 2 hour shoot with her on Friday just gone in the Clarion Hotel in Dublin. A fun time was had by all the session was very relaxed and laid back. I love this beauty-dish reflection in the eyes and the black and white.
I have some more very strong images from the shoot that will be added to the portfolio page in a few days time. I can’t wait to see how the film shots turn out.
“”Update: The film shots did not turn out, the shutter of the film camera seemed to be getting stuck part of the way through its travels. Luckily I only lost about 3 or 4 shots. I’ve always been advised to have a backup camera, on this shoot the film body was the 2nd backup body. The first two camera bodies functioned perfectly from start to finish.
I’m now in the market for a new 35mm Canon EOS 1V or Canon EOS3 with a powerboost drive attached. I’ve tried fix the EOS300, and its slightly better but still not good enough to use on a real job.
