Just one picture...

I took this in the same place as the photos in the last post were taken, but only realised I liked it after I had made that post. It needed quite a lot of 'photoshopping' (in inverted commas because I actually use The GIMP and Lightroom) to make everything black & white except for the red, and then I replaced the sky with another one because the original sky was completely white and very boring. I constantly look over my old pictures that I didn't see anything in the first time around. There's plenty of rough, but the occasional diamond.

Autumn in Adare Manor

I like autumn. All those hues of orange and red. Not having to get up so early to see the sun rise, and not having to stay out to late to watch it set. Cool, but sunny afternoons. The return to the cycle after hectic summers. I mostly like it because it has allowed me for the first time in while, to just post up some pictures with no whinging. I like when things are back to normal...

Click on the photo below for a slideshow.

The Evil Eyes

My cat is, by all accounts, a perfectly pleasant cat. It's not a scraggy, old, flea-ridden mog. She's got quite beautiful long black and white fur. She's got a normal cat face - free from blemishes or disfigurements. You could even go so far as to say that she's a rather cute looking cat.

The thing is though, I don't really like her. She's kind of annoying. She runs away every time you go anywhere near her, or god forbid, try to pet her or pick her up. She has an incredibly annoying habit of miaowing constantly if you go out into the back garden, even though there doesn't appear to be anything bothering her and she has plenty of food and whatever else cats need.

She's also quite an effective killer. Every couple of days, she presents us with a freshly killed mouse, or bird, and recently, an impressively large fish from our pond. Behind the façade of the cute face and gentle demeanour, there is a killer lurking, one with all the cold efficiency of a deadly assassin.

None of this was on my mind when I went into our back garden recently to take a few pictures of the cat. I was actually thinking the opposite: I just wanted to get a few cute pictures of the cat because I hadn't taken anything in a while and I had a free model who couldn't really object. I intended to take flattering pictures because I thought it would be good practise for taking pictures of other living things, namely humans.

But flattering pictures was not what I ended up with, at least, that's what I think of them. While taking them and particularly while post-processing them, I ended up with photos that look like the cat is plotting to take over a small country in South America, or perhaps point a giant gun from space and hold the world at ransom. In one picture, somebody commented that she looked like "Batman's cat", and Batman, while certainly not evil, definitely has a sinister, gothic look about him. I suppose it's all that black.

I think this says some really interesting things about photography, and how the person behind the lens can influence the picture and use it to create their own representation of something, rather than a faithful rendition of something in the world; be it a landscape or a portrait of a person, or as I've found out, even a cat. Clearly my less-than-flattering feelings shone through to the photos, and whether I wanted to or not made no difference. Honestly, I made no conscious decision to take sinister or dark photos, nor did I mean to post-process them to make them even darker. I just found myself doing it. One picture I converted to black and white, and using a layer mask I painted the eyes back into colour. I did it just because I thought it might look cool. The picture I chose just because her eyes were widest in it. This is what I ended up with:

Pretty evil, eh? Here are a couple of pictures that I posted earlier in the week of the cat, taken at the same time as this one:



So that's that. The next time somebody takes a photo of you, study the results very carefully. They might just think you're the next Bond villain. Or Batman.

God I wish I was Batman...

Reluctant model

I was going to shoot Declan O'Rourke tonight. Yes, I know what you're thinking: "that's a bit mean!" you exclaim. But hilariously, I didn't actually mean shoot him with a gun, but with a camera! At his gig! I know, I know, I should be a comedian and make lots of money...

Anyway, I checked everything. I was hoping to get some into the college paper or magazine. I checked my lens for dirt. My battery for charge. My ISO. My ISO again. My ISO yet again. Centre-weighted metering, AF-S, and any other acronym I could think of I checked. But then I got on the bus, got half way to the University just to find out that it was cancelled. Sigh. On the plus side, I did go the whole way around the bus route in a great big circle for the first time in my life. That was pretty amazing.

So instead of what hopefully would have been decent photos of Declan O'Rourke singing, I'm going to treat you to some photos of my cat taken earlier in the day. I've never really liked cats - our ones in particular. I don't know whether it's the air of superiority and disdain, or the fact that they spend every waking moment futilely trying to sneak into the house. I mean jeez, get a hobby! Go out and meet people, join a club or society! Gawd.

My reluctant model today was our aptly-named mog Fuzz, who gave me bemused, almost pitying looks as I took her photo. She stretched a bit, and then with all the enthusiasm of a potato, strolled away from me as one might casually leave a bad dinner party, or some other minor annoyance. Slight curiosity for a time, and then nothing.

As usual, click the photo below to be whisked to a Gallery of Earthly Delights.

Anti-speeding adverts

Apparently we're pretty bad here in lovely ol' Ireland for speeding and road traffic accidents and of course drink-driving, and the government have produced some pretty shocking television ads promoting safer driving. However, I've never seen something like this before, and I must say I'm pretty impressed. It's innovative, to say the least. I came in on Monday morning to the University of Limerick where I study, and was suprised to see a crashed car at the front gates. On closer inspection, it turned out to be an ad promoting safer driving and asking drivers to slow down. There are another two similar 'displays' in other parts of the campus. The cars are covered in graffiti-style slogans urging people to slow down - probably to appeal to the 'kids', but it also means (whether intentional or not) it takes longer to recognise that these are not genuine crashed cars, increasing the impact of them.

The cars look genuine; they have stickers from a recycling company nearby so presumably they were sourced from there, but whether or not they are actually as a result of car crashes I don't know (I would assume that it's unlikely, both for legal reasons and for the risk of upsetting families) It's still most definitely impressive. Any advertising that surprises you and makes you look twice is bound to have an impact, and in this case it's even better because it's for a good cause. And now, some pictures!

As an aside, I made the age-old error (well, since digital came in anyway) of forgetting to check my ISO before taking the pictures, resulting in these all being shot at 1600. Oh well, luckily the exposure was ok - I don't think they look too noisy.