I love great old grungy neon signs like this one…

With the horrendous summer we’re having here in Ireland it’s making it difficult to go out and take pictures. I know any good photographer should be prepared to go out in all weather but ben it’s bucketing down constantly it’s hard to get motivated. It’s also hard to hold an umbrella and a canon 5d at the same time. that said, my little Panasonic LX2 has been a useful traveling companion during the harsh weather and the other day while taking a walk by a local canal I noticed that the constant wet weather had sparked quite a degree of moss and lichen to grow on the trees that lined the canal, and when you look at them up close they really are quite fascinating and make great pictures.

I came across these little guys while out for a quick walk during lunch break from my day job. They were nestling beside some trees by the canal just down from where I work. Taken with my trusty LX2 and Processed using the Trial of Lightroom 2 which I’m giving a go at the moment.

I was watching some great tutorials on Kelby Training from Moose Peterson and have been wanting to try out one of the techniques he mentioned for a long time. Finally I got the chance on saturday and this is the result. Usually when I try do do long exposure stream shots like this I end up with the water looking like silver (in a not good way). The trick of course is to use a polarizer.

Sometimes you can forget what got you interested in Photography in the first place. It’s easy when you’re doing professional work or in my case trying to build up a portfolio for some stock agencies, to loose heart and loose vision. You can become blinkered by what’s good enough to sell and start to ignore artistic or other possibilities right in front of you. I heard a great piece of advice recently from a professional who said that one of the most important things is to, every now and then, go out and take pictures just for the sake of taking pictures. Take pictures for yourself. Remind yourself of the joy of photography. Forget about what might sell and just go were your eye leads you.

So last weekend, in a rare bout of sunshine here in dublin I did just that. And I enjoyed it more than I’ve enjoyed taking photographs in a long time. Not that there was anything special, but I freed myself from self doubt and commercialism and just had fun. Because at the end of the day thats what it’s all about for me. Anyway, here are some of the shots I found interesting from my walk about in the dublin sunshine

(Incidentally, as an experiment I shot RAW+JPEG on my 5D, using custom picture setting. I normally only shoot RAW, but I was very impressed with the results of the JPEGS. All these are from the in camera Jpeg engine)

I was messing around tonight trying to find the best way to shoot a candle, which is surprisingly tricky. Anyway, here’s probably the best one I shot. The blue was daylight from a window behind the camera, as the white balance was set to tungsten to match the flame.

I’ve been somewhat inundated with work and photography related stuff this week that I haven’t updated as much as I really should be, so apologies dear readers. More to come, honestly! Actually, it’s a public holiday in Ireland this weekend, so I should have time to relax, catch my breath and get back to some serious writing. Incidentally, in case you were wondering what the Photoshelter widget on the sidebar is all about I was recently accepted as a contributing photographer to the Photoshelter Collection, which is a relatively new and very promising Stock Agency. Unlike microstock sites they put the focus on the Photographer and the art rather than making oodles of money for themselves. To quote the tag line on their website:

“We believe photography is an art and a profession, not a commodity.”

Never a truer word was spoken. Despite being a contributer to some microstock sites too I’m not overly fond of what they’ve done to the industry. They really have turned it into a commodity with the promise that you can make big bucks on volume sales which is not entirely true. You “CAN” but you more than likely won’t. I suspect the number of Photographers on popular microstock sites actually making enough money from the site is less than 1%. But I digress, and that’s a rant for another day.

I’ve been so busy since I got back from my recent vacation to New York City that I simply haven’t had the time to sort through my photographs and post some here to my blog. I had intended to do so from my hotel but the internet connection was too flakey while we were there. In the mean time here is a smattering of shots from the trip. Enjoy !