In a (New) World of My Own

Mariah sent me two videos last night and it was amazing to watch the pride and joy on Caira’s face as she made her way across the carpet and sad that I wasn’t there. :[

I guess I’ve been on a roll with infrared photos this weekend, between yesterday and this evening. I got off work at three as there was literally nothing for me to do – I took the manager I would come in tomorrow morning as I don’t trust the termporary staff to organise the customer deliveries. It was worth it, I ran home, grabbed my kit and went up to Terryland, newly armed with a hotshoe spirit level that came free with a five euro magazine. Sure beats the 18 euros Jessop’s in Dublin wanted for it. And honestly, I’m already wondering how I ever managed to live without it.

The weather turned, I had no hat or gloves, and so I went home a few photos better off.

Full circle

Beside the bridge

Under the bridge

For all the gear I took with me this evening I managed to forget my gloves, although thankfully the wind wasn’t all that bad once I got away from the sea.

Hah.

These first four photos are infrared, I really was impressed with how the 28 and 50mm lenses performed – there’s no hotspots in any of the 40-odd IR photos I took, although there is a definite vignetting in most of them. I don’t mind it though, I think it adds a nice feel to the photos. So to give my official reccomendation, if you want to try IR photography with a Canon camera, splash out a little and get either the f/2.8 28mm or the f/1.8 50mm lenses.

And now for the point of this post. One thing I wanted to try today was to go back and capture previously shot scenes, but in infrared this time around. I’m dead happy with the results. Ordering is new and then the original:

Remember this?

Bill Gates, eat your heart out

——————–

Butler hall

The house on the hill

——————–

February

Lonely

I’m off to Renville for the evening to take photos and as it stands right now, this is the full complement of what is going with me:

Tripod
Two cameras
Three lenses
Polarising and IR filters
Cable release for my Canon
Flashgun for my Canon
Spare batteries for everything
Several spare rolls of film

I guess yesterady wasn’t such a complete writeoff after all. I managed to get a few (94 :) photos of a street soccer match out behind the Jervis shopping centre before the gang of teenagers chased me off..literally. I dropped down to medium jpeg resolution, set the camera to monochrome and started snapping madly. Considering the only lens with me was the 50mm I’m happy that any came out okay.

Untitled

Untitled

Untitled

You can find the balance of photos in my Dublin set.

Really and fucking truly, it was a waste of a day:

The clerk refused the medical because the doctor didn’t tick a box to specify that I didn’t need a given vaccine.

They requested from me a form that I was specifically informed on the paperwork that I didn’t need, forcing me to out and wandering Ballsbridge in search of a net cafe to download it (to the lady in Jury’s: You are a lifesaver, if I knew your name I’d name my nextborn after you).

They requested paperwork from Mariah that I had already provided from her family. Again, she wasn’t supposed to need these papers.

First, I’m angry because of the manifest lack of help from the staff. To help someone is to take responsibility for one’s actions, right? If nothing else, it was a lesson for me in the danger’s on an entrenched bureaucracy. There was a lovely family I met there who were living in a very remote part of Galway. The father was Irish and the mother French, and both of them were naturalized US citizens. Because of this their son didn’t automatically gain US citizenship (as I understand it) or a US passport, as he was born in France, and both the French and Irish American embassies had kept the family running in circles as no one at either embassy was willing to take responsibility for their actions and take the five minutes to help them.

Second, I’m sad at the siege mentality on display at the embassy. I only spoke to one American the whole time I was there and she was (seemingly) a second-level clerk. The security guards were private contractors and all of the administrative staff I met were Irish. We were kept in a portacabin that was a safe distance from the embassy, after being searched, all our electronics quarantined and escorted by a guard at all times.

I’m sure that little four year old girl the guard roared at was actually a ninja who kept coils of shigawire in her hair.

I’m going to call the embassy in a few minutes to arrange a new interview.

/rant

Do you?

You can find all of these (plus teh more!) here.

(Insert Gary Jules’ excellent remix of a bad 80’s song here)

Small world

You can find some background on this photo here on boards.ie. Assuming you can get through – it’s sad that the site has become a victim of it’s own success that it’s nearly completely inaccessible for large parts of each day because it get’s so much traffic. Failing that, you can find the tutorial I used here, that I in turn stole from Flickr. The photo quality was pretty bad as I was more interested in getting the photos taken, than anything I would keep (the fact it was raining didn’t help),

Otherwise, it’s a slow day. It’s cold, pissing rain and and I’m stuck in waiting for a package for mum anyways. Using said slow day to go back over my work, I think I’ve decided that I like black and white photography. I always seem happier with a photo when I either bleach it or just strip out the colour entirely. So yeah, I’m looking forward to getting my new camera – I’ve a roll of shiny new B&W film sitting on my shelf waiting for it.

All that aside, yes I do smile:

Don’t tell anyone though, I’ve gone to great lengths to convince people that the only facial expressions I can safely manage are either a sour grimance or a fierce scowl.

I think Mariah’s photos this stolen intellectual property (arr!) sums up Caira perfectly:

lol

Freeeeedom

I’m sure you’ve heard about this nonsense if you’re Irish.

I was going to make a post here to the effect that I didn’t give a shit about it, but the hypocrisy was too much for me, so I’ll moderate it to say: So what?

I had my family give me the argument that Croke Park is some sort of sacred bloody ground because of the black and tans. So what? The green has likely been replaced a dozen times since then, the stadiums have been long since replaced and the only people alive now who walked the earth then were babes in the crib. And now we’re expected to punish their grandchildren for this? Bullshit.

“It’s part of our history!”

So what? For sure Croker has had it’s share of tragic and historic moments, but for all of that it’s a stadium that’s supported by government tax money and I’m a tax payer. I’d rather that money be put to good use than be used to hold up a pointless bauble to Irishness republicanism.

I’m too much the cynic to follow nationalism. I belive in Ireland, not in any ruling party or government, and I will ’til the day I die.