Change

What often seems like the scariest six letter word in the english language, "change" has been my friend for the past 12 months at least.

My beautiful boy Cullan seems to change every day (his look of surprise captured above has remained pretty consistent though). As I write this he has managed to throw and break a cup in the kitchen, which is probably a good thing because we might not have otherwise noticed the shoe he decided to hide in the bin! Bless :-)

And amongst all this chaos and amusing mania, I've been busying away a few hours a week setting up my own photography business. Whilst now probably isn't the best economic time to be doing this (even with one whole shiny penny back on petrol), it's something I love so much and feel absolutely compelled to do.

Already armed with my business name, I've been trying to come up with a logo since Christmas and have finally managed to create one I like. Below is the result of my blood, sweat and late-night profanities :-)

I wanted to keep within an Irish theme and decided celtic swirls was the way to go. The spirals are usually associated with life, birth and growing (to me the very thing a business is about and in particular what mine hopes to capture). The colours I had actually decided in advance, as I wanted them to refer to photography (RGB - the way light is captured on a digital camera's sensor) and also use the colours most associated with Ireland and Britain. The final flourish I allowed myself was to finish off the spirals in a kind of heart-shape, I'm all about the love! :-)

I'm still busying away on a business website and am hoping to have that online by April, so there'll be a few late nights coming methinks. I think I'll leave the blog design as it is. Still like my cloud picture and then there's that horrible word - change ;-)

Happy 1st Birthday Cullan

So far, despite having this beautiful little monster in my life, I've managed to resist the temptation to overwhelm the interweb with millions of pictures of him (ok there's still quite a few about). However, today it's something I cannot resist.

Today is my little man's first birthday and I can't tell you how much that fills me with happiness.

So forgive the indulgence as I share the many faces of my beautiful Cullan (and place them in public domain to embarrass him in future years.







This is the day after he was born. Throwing up a sign to his homies, Cullan was "Winning" long before Charlie Sheen discovered Tiger Blood.

 

He still hasn't decided which is his better side. And now for the funny/cute . . .

Better than any gift I've ever received from Santa. Happy 1st Birthday Cullan, Love Dad x

Mo Bhaile

Having settled across the water in England, the term 'home' is a strange one for me. Several times a year (as much as is possible) I find myself returning home having visited home. Perhaps I'm a child of two cities, it makes me wonder if my son will feel the same when he's older.

Each trip back to Dublin seems all too short and so often I get caught up in what's going on I forget to take my camera out of the bag.

Fortunately the last time, I remembered to take at least a few :-)

Wedding Workshop with photographer Steve Gerrard

It's been a hectic few months since Christmas. My day job has had me visiting every country in the British Isles at least twice (I can't complain too much as I've managed to squeeze in a visit to Dublin). And while the people I work with are really nice and friendly, it's hard to be away from my little monster who is becoming all too good at saying "Bye Daddy".

However, the past couple of weeks my feet have been firmly in Birmingham and it's a good thing too because this week I attended a Wedding Photography Workshop with Steve Gerrard. Not the wannabe-DJ/footballer for Liverpool, but an actual DJ turned Photographer based in Birmingham. If you're not familiar with his work take a trip to http://stevegerrardphotography.com/ for some amazing Music, Wedding and Portrait photography.

Thanks to the twitterverse (@tdkavanagh) and little Cullan waking up at 3am, I read about the first Wedding Workshop that Steve had decided to hold and booked myself on immediately. To say I'm grateful is an understatement. I've been so inspired by just looking at his work and got to spend the day hearing how he does it. I held my wee for a stupid amount of time, afraid to miss a thing :-)

I don't know why but I didn't expect to get so much detail and insight, perhaps I'm to used to people guarding their secret way of working like Gandalf had warned them to. The fantastic photographer Emma Case (http://emmacasephotography.blogspot.com/) was also there, impressively signing what Steve was saying for another participant. I've been working in training for what must be seven years now and thought for the first Wedding workshop it was extremely professional. A part of me is jealous of the people attending the next sessions, something that good just gets better and better.

The group I attended with were great aswell, I also learned a lot from talking to them. Now my head is just bursting with ideas and I desperately need to start putting these into action!

The day even included a shoot with Steve and two models who were great, especially given how cold it was in the shade. These pics are the ones I liked the best, if you've already jumped over to Steve's website be gentle, I'm only new ;-)