London - Architecture

It's not often that I get to get out of Ireland for a trip and with the pressure of University at the moment , a break to London for a day was a nice getaway.  While we were there we visited The Radical Eye Exhibition in the TATE Modern, to see part of Sir Elton John's Collection of photographs. We also did the touristy thing and went around taking photos of the sights. Among the ideas I wanted to try and shoot while I was there, was to capture the architecture. I decided to focus on the modern buildings of the city. Below are the set of ten images that show what the buildings in London are like.

My Photography Journey so far...

Photography is something ingrained in me, since the very first timeI shot my first photo at the age of three or four on a Minolta Maxxium 7000, I have enjoyed taking photos. It wasn't until in 2008 when on a trip to Australia and on to india did I start to get into it again. Up until then I hadn't done much in the line of taking photos as it was, (what i felt at the time) quite cumbersome with film and not really knowing what I would get, how to go about it and film wasn't cheap. With the advent of digital it all became easy, with the click of a button and suddenly you had instant gratification in the form of a picture on the LCD of the camera. 

Looking across at Mumbi, India, Taken on a Sony A300 

Im not going to lie, I though I was the bees knees. Although looking back I was downright awful but we all do have to start from somewhere. The shot above would be one of my better shots from back them, the others I never want them to see the light of day.  For the next few year I would dabble not really paying much attention to what I was doing, until the heavy snows hit Ireland and the county looked like something out of a fairy tail. For the first time I went out with some intent to try and capture what I was envisioning . 

Fast forward a few years to (2011)  when I was in Dublin City University studying pharmaceutical chemistry. At the end of my first year there I traded up to a canon 5DmkII from my Sony A300, Early in my second year there I started to work with another photographer out side of the university, along with covering a multitude of event for the student union. I covered events from concerts with the stripes to shave and dye to raise money for charity and everything in-between. The fire and passion for photography had well and truly been relit and burned even more intense this time.  I started testing the waters of different areas of photography and began to develop my photographic style. During the middle of that year I decided to join   the photography society there (DCU Fotosoc). 

The next year I began to teach some basic workshops and passed on what I knew to people while still leaning so much myself. 

My favourite area of photography has to be portraiture and fashion, why? Well thats simple, because it lets me tell my own stories and work with some amazing and interesting people.  One of the first shoots I did was when I went on a trip to Berlin with DCU Fotosoc,  Myself and two of my friends decided to go on a walk to the Brandenburg gate at 3 in the morning on what i can only describer as a baltic night, -3Deg C. On the way we talked and shot some street photo of the completely empty streets. The shot we took that nigh were the most memrobile shots from the trip. 

Unter Den Linden, Berlin at 3am 

The portraits I shot were of my friends who were with me, I was trying out the Brenizer Method of portraiture in the first shot below, which involves taking loads of photos of your subject, stitching them all together to give a shallow depth of field. The others were all shot normally using a 50mm lens.  I found that using a 50mm lens forced me to be more creative  as it was so limiting. But it also helped me to understand how to isolate my subject making the images much more striking.

Since then I have organised a few of my own shoot around the country all of which can been seen in my blogs. But the biggest thing to happen to me so far was my trip to delft where I bough my first film camera, a humble Mamyia M645 medium format camera with a standard 80mm lens. This bring me back to the very first photo i remember taking on that old Minolta Maxxium 7000. I For anyone who has never used a film camera I urge you to try it out. After spending years leaning everything on digital, film suddenly didn't seem so daunting. I knew if I put what I had been practicing into use I should get some useable shots.  I did get some however it was a totally new learning curve, as each film behaves differently when shooting, I'm not saying it was hard to learn, it was just well... different. 

A church and clock tower in the centre of Delft. Taken with a mamyia M645, 80mm ƒ2.8 Sekor lens on Fuji Reala 100ASA

The Canals of delft. Taken with a mamyia M645, 80mm ƒ2.8 Sekor lens on Ilford Delta 100ASA

So Dabbling with film, researching different film stock and with the help of my Friend Colin (Check our his blog and photos here >> colintonge.com  ) I started to get results that I was happy with. A big decision that I recently made was to purchase a Hasselblad 500C/M, which is one of my dream cameras. 

Since I have started to shoot film, I have found that I slow down and think about my shots much more, making each and every shot count.  There is something about shooting on film that just feels right, each shot feel more connected and more alive then anything I have ever shot on a digital camera. Now that I have the film bug I am the look out of interesting cameras, lens and films that I can use to tell more stories. 

Taken on my Hasselblad 500C/M with a Zeiss 80mm ƒ2.8T* Planer lens using Kodak Portra 100

My outlook is very different now to what it was when I first started out. I am still leaning and constantly improving what I do and what I want to show people.  This leads me on to my next chapter in my photography journey. From September I will be back in University, this time to follow my passion in photography. 

If your interested in seeing the rest of my work make sure to head over to my main site (Here) and check out the rest of my blogs of the shoots I have done. 

Fine art - Flowers

Sometimes beauty can be seen in the simplest of things. Here is a selection of flowers that I have shot.  All the shots below were captured using a Mamyia M645 medium format film camera.  The monochrome shots were taken on Kodak Tri-X and the colour shots on an out of date roll of Fuji Provia Slide film.  Shooting out of date film has given the film a strange washed out look, along with a strange but interesting  colour cast.

Film Photos From delft

If you haven't already read my blog about shooing in delft head over to and read it: Here.

So after a few weeks wait to get the films developed and get myself a scanner to scan the photos, I finally get to share them! I shot three film types and here are a few from each roll I shot.  Of all the films I shot during my time in Delft, I love the look and feel of the Ilford Delta more then any of the others and even preferred it over my digital shots. 

Ilford Delta 100ASA

Fuji Reala 120ASA

Lomography Colour  100ASA

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Travelling to Delf and some Medium Format Film

Delft

Recently I was lucky to get the chance to travel to Delft, a city in the Netherlands.  The city is a quite architecturally beautiful, with many of the building being centuries old and of typical Dutch styling.  The Small streets, the many canals and bridges along with the churches really do make Delft what it is. 

We spent a few days wondering around, sampling all that Delft has to offer, the food, the sights and the atmosphere.  We Explored both the Old and New churches, which have significant links back to Kells, Kilkenny through William of Orange. Below are a few shots of Delft and the final shot is of a walk way in Amsterdam on the way home 

While there I came across one of the coolest vintage camera shops I have seen, they had a wide selection of vintage film cameras, from the Nikon F to Hasselblad 500C's and everything in between. I was looking for a Medium format camera, although lusting after a Hasselblad, I knew they were out of my range starting at €700 just for the body with no lens. Looking around I seen some Bronica's, Lubitel's, Roleiflex to name a few.  After taking to the shop assistant, I finally decided on a Mamiya M645 camera.

Shooting with the Mamiya was a challenge in its self, with no metering and no hand held light meter I had to first test expose with my digital camera and then take the shoot with film,  The view from the waist level finder and ground glass was very similar to the experience I had shooting a Hasselblad 503C, Which is in a previous blog head over and check it out Here. I also found myself using the Sunny 16 rule and making an educated guess at what what the photos would come out like. Taking photos with this camera was a thrill, even more as I couldn't wait to find out what I had captured. 

Scanning the film presents another challenge as at the moment I havant got a backlight scanner, so I have to take a photo of them using my digital camera and my computer screen as a light source. It isn't the best quality so I haven't scanned many. but here is a small low quality sample of whats to come when I get a scanner. The films used are Fuji Reala 100 and Lomography Colour 100, 120 Rolls. and C41 processed. I do have some Ilford Delta 100 but that will take a while as it has been sent off to be hand processed.  Below The top picture is Kells, Kilkenny where I was using the end of the rolls, below that is Up a windmill in Delft with my Folks. 

Kells Series

Lately I have had some time to go around my lovely picturesque home village of Kells, in Co. Kilkenny. With the intimation of a new stone seat overlooking the priory i decided to take a few photos of the area. 

The chair, created by Kevin Fennelly, sits on the high point of the village overlooking the magnificant castles ruins, golden fields and lush landscape. 

The castle walk leads to Hutchinson's mill another picturesque location with  a weir on the kings river. 

All these photographs and more are available for print via my store. So head on over and check them out.  

Berlin 2014

Berlin the capital city of Germany, the location of DCU FotoSoc's trip for 2014. Being to Germany many times before i expected a smililar expreancy to what Munich and Nürburg had given me. But what I got was far different, and the only way in which i can describe it would be alternative. Berlin is famous for its street art scene, its modern architecture and night life. On the first day we took an alternative tour of berlin, seeing some of the local street art, along with heading off to a street art work shop where were created our own stencils.

That night we headed out on a pub crawl getting to see bars that we wouldn't get to see anywhere else, sadly I don't have any photos other then iPhone shots that real don't do any of the places justice that we visited.

Day 2 and myself and another photographer got up early grabbed  a quick breakfast and hit the streets for some good streets shooting, trying to get no so touristy shots a tourists. The fun of jumping into tramlines to get shots and focusing on angles that aren't normally seen.

later that Day we all met up and head on a city tour of berlin, getting to see the berlin wall, checkpoint charlie and the jewish memorial and the brandenburg gate.  For this part I'm going to let the photos do the talking as really its best i show you what we seen.

As a portrait photographer, naturally i snook in time to capture some portraits during the day. The crisp cold, fantastic blue sky and historic setting really lent themselves to some spectacular shots not only on this day but later ib the week when we visited another part of the berlin wall.

The highlight of trip happened the second night, with a crazy idea to go out shooting during the night at around 2am, what happened that night really made the trip. Myself and two other decided to walk from our hostel to the brandenburg gate in -3 deg. C which took nearly an hour due to the constant stopping and starting to take photos. The brandenburg gate is rarely deserted enough to capture a shot that shows the whole gate and down the street on the other side of it. Taking the perfect opportunity to grab the shot I snapped off about 5 frames hoping that that would be enough as we had to move quick in the cold. I then decided to snap a portrait using a composite method taking around 10 photos for one portrait, Here are the results which really blew me away when i seen them.