In a (New) World of My Own

I was asked by Stevie at work to go and photograph their weekly footie game on Wednesday. It was a fascinating learning experience for me; I can really appreciate the skill and dedication sports photographers need to get their amazing shots. Out of 1326 total photos, I had 103 good photos, and out of those I had 14 worthy of actually putting up on Flickr. I’ve also realised I’m starting to hit against the limits of my gear, so I’ve decided to sell most of my current kit and order a 30D from Hong Kong.

And also that I really abuse vignetting and that I should stop.

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Last Sunday we had sub-zero temperatures, snow and flash flooding. This Sunday we had warm, hazy sunshine and people going around in shirtsleeves. Now it’s dreary, cloudy and cold. Good old psychotic Ireland, eh. Still, yesterday was a magnificent a dawn, such as I haven’t seen in years

Between you and I…

Weird weather aside, I’m selling everything I own that I can’t carry. You can currently get a Nintendo Gamecube, 43 PC games, or two lenses. I’m open to offers on it all…buy them.

She was on the phone with mum tonight and I could hear her from the next room over.

She has a bright future as a drill sergeant. :]

I feel much better, a day of sleep followed by two full meals worked wonders. Eh, Mike and I were originally supposed to go down to the Burren for lack of anything else to do (congrats on the press job BTW), but it was fucking snowing at one o’clock. Snow. In March. -_-

Mum absolutely adored the photo of dad. Really and absolutely. My work here is done.

I took some photos during dinner to make up for it all, but I’m not sure I’ll live out the night after posting them…

Oh Mark…

/pose

[face_eatyourdammeddinner]

I’m still unsure whether going backward is the way forward. Oh for sure I love the handling of the camera and the final images – there’s a feel and look to them that digital really can’t match, I guess I can only call it a texture. But godfuck, the wait and the cost. To break it down, every 36 black and white photos costs me €18.50 – €7.50 for film and €11 for development. Colour film is much cheaper at €6 per 24 photos. But still. My digitial gear cost far far more, but I can take more photos conversely. On Wednesday I took 410 photos, divide by 24 for 17 and multiply by 6 for a total of the €102 euros that it would cost me, not to mention the film I’d have to lug around.

That’s cost, there’s also the wait. Standard development time for colour film is three working days and five for black and white. Compare it to the hour between snapping the photo of the cat on Bohermore and having it processed and on Flickr.

Listos: I’ll save film for those special moments.

Anyways, eye candy:

Cleo’s little sister

I love this

An old HP scanner/printer was being dumped at work as it’s feed mechanism has been destroyed, but I was allowed take it as it still scans just fine. It’ll be tomorrow before I get at most of the old photos – Jenn is the keeper of all our family photos and she’s in bed, but I’ve scanned in those few I do have on hand:

Nana

Mum and dad’s wedding

Well now

I wound up coming home from work sick and going to bed. I managed to scrunch up into a ball in the corner, with my head at some queer angle, so now I get horrible shooting pains if I move my head. Awesome.

My head is killing me, my throat feels like the Rub’ al Khali and my gut aches like someone has been kicking it all night. And I get to go to work in two hours. Happy joy feelings suffuse me!

Back to the weekend. The Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin are truly beautfiul, all I could think was that dad would have loved them. Never mind photography, I took a bunch of shots in one glasshouse and then pretty much put the camera away as I was enjoying the smells and textures too much. There was one room with flowers and trees of the Americas and I will swear to my dying day that it smelled just like San Diego. We went baiting squirrels as well, although the only big lens I currently have is the 70-300mm for the Minolta and (so I thought) I had no film on me, feh. Trust me to find two rolls in my bag after I got to the hostel. I had a few wide angle shots as I was borrowing Ryan’s 10-20, but they wound up corrupted for some reason.

But yeah, lots of wonderful flower photos. I think flowers are awesome as they seem so simple to start with, but the closer you get the more intricate they before.

It started yesterday with stomach cramps, moving on to diarrhea and worse cramps by today. It wasn’t the proudest moment of my life, but it all wound up with me having to sneak into the ladies bathroom in Bewley’s cafe on O’Connell Street at 8 o’clock this morning as the men’s were closed for cleaning.

The second trip to the embassy went about as well as the last. It mostly consisted of shouting at the head of the immigrant visa department. She rejected the affidavits from Mariah and her family because they used the I-864 form, instead of the I-134. One is an “affidavit of support” and the other is an “affidavit of support for a visa applicant.” Confused? The two forms are near enough to identical to make no difference, both are approved by the Department of Homeland Security, and indeed there is no specific prescribed form in the papers I have from the embassy. But no, they won’t accept the standard I-864, and the administrator refused to expand on why this is so until I had threatened to lodge a formal complaint with her superior – Mariah and I have paid hundreds of dollars on this application, and I expect some sort of show from them.

Moving backward, it all started when she rejected the police certificate because they put my date of birth in as “11981.” To mine self, it’s incredibly petty and beureaucratic, amplified by the fact they refused to help me until I threatened to tattle to their bosses.

So yeah, another fucking setback. The only good thing that came out of this was I forced them to return my passport – the immigrant visa section tried (unintentionally, I think) to put me in a bind where I had to get documents that required my passport, but they had my passport. Half the time I want to climb into a plane and just go, I miss you both every day and it’s never going to get any easier.

It’s not much of a consolation, but at least the boardies side of things went a little better. First off, a huge thanks to DarrenG for putting me up on Saturday night, and for the long-term loan of the Sigma 70-300mm lens. I had an interesting time, I learned a few new things to do, both with my camera and Photoshop, and it was interesting to see everyone’s photos of the same subject.