When I first put up this website and blog it was as part of my entry into last years Peoples Photography exhibition in Dublin. It was a quick last minute effort I never thought it looked nice.
I’ve decided it’s time to update the site, put up some new photos and try to link this blog into the website in a more efficient manner. It’s a work in progress but hopefully it’ll get better.
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.
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.
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)
I haven’t seen snow in years. Today we finally got some. It didn’t stay on the ground long but I was able to grab a couple of quick shots on the way home tonight. Shame I didn’t have a tripod but at least I have something to remember the “Great Blizzard of 2009”. At least it was a great blizzard if the Irish radio stations were anything to go by tonight.
