iPhone

10-10-10 10:10

Posted on by declan


I had great plans to take part in Open House Dublin this weekend but a touch of the winter vomiting bug put paid to my adventures. Fortunately this morning was 10 October 2010 and I was well enough to go out and try to find a photo to mark 10-10-10 10:10. In fairness I could have probably gone out on other days as well but the stuff on the ground might not have been as pretty…

Our Indian Summer forcast last week does not appear to have arrived and some over night wind knocked an abundance of leaves off the trees around my apartment. I snapped a quick photo, made it my iPhone wall paper and then put the iPhone onto the pile leaaves the took a few snaps at 10:10. I then took some with the iPhone itself to tweet and suddenly the minute was gone. Next year it’ll be 11-11-11, a Friday and also Remembrance Day so maybe I can plan something better.

Dundrum Sunrise

Posted on by declan

 

On the drive to work this morning I was stuck in a traffic jam around Dundrum and half blinded by the reflection in my mirrors. The sun was rising directly behind me and the Luas bridge. Not moving anywhere quick enough to park and get out to take a proper photo but still not wanting to get arrested for using my phone in the car I just snapped a quick photo in the side mirror itself.  After a couple of quick tweaks in Photoshop Express on the iPhone I like it, even though I clearly need to clean the mirror.

iPhone 3GS camera

Posted on by declan

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 🙂

Protest Photography

Posted on by declan


Anyone who know me knows I like to go into the city center and photograph protest marches. They provide a good opportunity to watch the pro photo journalists in action and to practice people photography. Some days though I end up taking far more photos than I should or than I will ever manage to sort through and use.

Todays protest in Dublin was against the public service pension levy and other government cut backs. The unions were out in force and rather than the standard collection of Socialists and anarchists today we had tens of thousands of civil servants, nurses, journalists, construction workers, and on and on and on. It seemed everyone with a union card was on the streets.

Of course I got carried away with my camera and when I sat down hours later to look at my photos I found I had taken 1011 photos. 1011 photos! I’m actually annoyed at myself.

In comparison I’m reminded of Robert Capa who landed on the Normandy beaches and took 72 shots with two cameras. Now I realize it was a different time and he was infinately better at photography than I will ever be but surely 900 of todays photos would not exist if I had stopped, taken a breath and considered the value of the shot rather than letting the ease of digital photography lull me into just holding down the shutter button.

Capa Book

Posted on by declan

Not a very romantic book for Valentines day but I just bought a book I’ve wanted for ages, Robert Capa The Definitive Collection by Richard Whelan. It’s a massive book packed with the best photos by the greatest war photographer. Looking forward to reading it, though I suspect that will have to be tomorrow.

Valentines on the Luas

Posted on by declan

Happy Valentines Day.

(Update – I’ve had a bit of a backup failure on my blog and deleted some folders without realising that I had not backed up the files and they were still being used. This means I lost photos from September 2010 back to 2008. Whoops!!! Anyway I managed to restore most of the photos from my library but in this case I couldnt locate the luas photo which I fear only ever lived on my phone and blog and had been deleted from both. Still here are some roses in a photo taken that day as a replacement)