Category: Ireland

Great News

I’ve been a bad, bad blogger (I blame twitter!) but I just got some excellent news. I posted here about the project I was involved in to try and get an Educate Together school in our town. Well, the application that we made back in January has finally made its way through all the red tape and the Department of Education has today given us the go ahead and sanctioned our school!

There are a lot of people who have put a huge amount of time, work and energy into this and, although we still have a lot to do before the doors open in September, this is a day to pop the champagne corks. Well done everyone!

Ireland Photography

Belly Dancers

Canon 5D, 40mm, f4.5, 1/80, ISO 400

First shots from the new camera, and another Sunday party at the Happy Pear provided the perfect test. There was sunshine, live music and belly dancers all to raise money for a school in Peru and the place was buzzing. I was dying to see how my old 17mm wide angle looked without the crop:

Canon 5D, 17mm, f5.6, 1/320, ISO 100

Canon 5D, 34mm, f5.6, 1/320, ISO 100

Eve having a boogie and sporting her new boots:

Canon 5D, 17mm, f6.3, 1/1000, ISO 200

And one with the 85mm to show Eve having a great time…she found some pink:

Canon 5D, 85mm, f5.6, 1/500, ISO 100

So, my verdict on the 5D is that I love the colour and the tones and getting back all of the image without the crop, but….I’m afraid I’ve gotten a faulty one. The light meter is underexposing by about 3 stops and just can’t cope with any high contrast conditions. It was actually a good exercise to have to use my brain to figure out exposures (ha!) but I’d rather have the light meter thanks! Hopefully the customer service from the people I bought the camera from will be just as good when you have to return something as it’s been so far.

Ireland Personal Photography

Chocolate Love Fest

Canon 10D, 17mm, f4, 1/180, ISO 100

The icing on the cake of a pretty amazing weekend was getting to be a judge at the Chocolate Love Fest in the Happy Pear on Sunday. I know I’ve mentioned the Pear before but it really is a special place and they’re always organising cool things like this. People were invited to bring along their best chocolate creations and there was a table set outside where we could all sample the results.

Some of the other judges. We took our job very seriously:

Canon 10D, 17mm, f5.6, 1/250, ISO 100

It started off fairly tame but I guess the judging took too long for the rest of the crowd. Before too long we were surrounded:

Canon 10D, 17mm, f5.6, 1/250, ISO 100

Well, they were pretty delicious:

Canon 10D, 40mm, f5.6, 1/500, ISO 100

Blogging Ireland Photography

Irish Blog Awards 2008

I’m stumbling off to my bed, and I promise I will post more about the awards and the pre-award events (with some photos of course) tomorrow when I’ve had a few hours sleep. But, I wanted to say that I’m thrilled to pieces and still a little bit stunned that gingerpixel won Best Photo Blog! How mad is that?! I couldn’t go to my bed without saying thank you to anyone who nominated me and to the judges who voted for me, oh and of course to Damien who made it all happen! What a night!

Blogging Ireland

What Do You Get…

…if you put 400 bloggers in one room?

Yes, tonight’s the night the Irish blog world has been buzzing about for months. I’m off in an hour or so to go photowalking with the photobloggers, then it’s onto the Market Bar for tea with the Lay-dees before we all descend on the Alexander Hotel for the third annual Irish Blog Awards.

The awards themselves are sold out at this stage but if anyone reading this is interested the photowalk is open to anyone who wants to join us, whether you have a fancy DSLR or a camera phone. We’re meeting at the Spire on O’Connell Street at noon if you want to come along.

If I don’t get to say it to you tonight (and I have a feeling you’ll be a hard man to talk to), then thank you Damien for the huge amount of work that you’ve put into this and for all your helpers too.