A few from the darkroom (lightroom that is!)

As I haven't had much opportunity to get beyond the front door, I took the opportunity to process some photographs I hadn't got around to. These are a few shots I took at Dublin Zoo when I was home recently.

Tom :)

Visiting Home - Dublin City

I didn't get a whole lot of time to shoot while I was in Dublin last month. But here's the result of a couple of hours in 'town. As you've probably gathered I'm a big fan of street photography and while I'm no Cartier-Bresson the first picture below is definitely a decisive moment. The guy walking towards the camera is far from impressed by what another passer-by is wearing. As always Ireland is still the clash of old and new! :)

What we love, we find time to do - awesome (not sure about love football - hate Bremen though!?!). 

Hope you like them, Tom :)

Visiting Home

So another long absence from the inter-verse and some more photographs to show for it. I'm slowly making progress through my images but it's been a hectic couple of months to say the least. In that time I did manage to spend some time back home in Ireland.

It seems a bit odd to be calling Ireland 'home' when it's been almost 10 years since I moved to England. At the time I'd planned to travel much further than Birmingham, but I won't complain when I can fly to Dublin in less than an hour :)

For our latest trip home we decided to go by train and boat. It seemed sensible at the time given Cullan's love for all that appears in Thomas the Tank Engine. But we'd underestimated the enjoyment level of an eight-hour journey with a little man with an even shorter attention span.

I think we all enjoyed this last trip the most. Cullan enjoying his daily ritual of a lollipop and playing on mommy's iphone while waiting for his uncles to wake up. A trip to the beach, zoo and as much fun as he could have with everyone. Plus a day dressed as Spider-man (I wore my hulk t-shirt!).

As always, too little time and too few people caught up with. Maybe the lottery will be kind and next time can be longer!

Tom :)

Bobby Aherne - Singer / Songwriter

While I was back home in Ireland last month for a wedding, I found some time to photograph Dublin musician Bobby Aherne.

Bobby is the lead singer of No Monster Club (check out their website here) and was being interviewed by my younger brother Paul. The interview was featured on TCR FM during Gary Jon's Éclectique show, a nice mix of old and new music from new, established and even unsigned musicians. The interview is still available on the station's replay link here until next week.

I really enjoyed this shoot, not just because Bobby's got a unique style, but it was really interesting to hear about his music and what he and his bandmates have achieved (including releasing albums through UK, Dutch, Italian and Australian labels and touring in Europe last year).

I've been doing a lot more photography work around music lately so expect to see some more soon, including my first live music shoot.

Tom :-)

Graffiti in Dublin

I think it's fair to say that after 10 years of living in the UK, I know more of Birmingham than I do of my birthplace Dublin.

It seems like every time I go back something new has opened, something old has closed and someone has put a random 'spike' in the middle of a busy street.

Even during my most recent visit I was surprised at the amount of building work that was taking place. Especially given the problems with the economy (not that Ireland is the only place experience that particular issue).

Birmingham has some incredible street art, a stroll around Digbeth is visiting an art exhibition. But beyond tags on a wall I don't remember seeing anything like it growing up in Ireland.

When I mentioned to my brother Paul that I wanted to photograph some street art in the city centre (which most Dubliners will refer to as "town"), he knew exactly where to go to find some amazing work. I'm beginning to think that next time I'm home I should jump on the tourist bus and 're-acquaint' myself with Dublin.

The genius of 'Zombie Monopoly'.

Beware the dog! :-)

Dublin Soul

Across the water in my hometown (city) of Dublin, my brother Paul has caught the camera bug. I seldom get time to catch up with my brothers by phone or skype let alone spend time with them.

So when I was in Ireland last week for some photography, Paul and I hit the streets with our cameras and tried to catch a bit of Dublin's soul.

And the best way to end an afternoon of photography. A burrito from Paul's latest discovery, Pablo Picanté Californian Burrito Bar. Very yum!

Tom :)

Saol-ing Away

So the last week or so has seen me spend more time behind a desk than a viewfinder unfortunately :-( On the plus side though, I have managed a few strides in my 'behind the scenes' work and am getting very close to launching my photgraphy website.

One of the things I've been working on is my processing workflow. This is mainly for two reasons (three if you count also being a bit of a geek!). Firstly, everybody wants nice pictures but nobody wants their photographer to take forever working on their photographs (and as they say time is money). Secondly I want to create a recognisable style for my pictures and some consistency in colour, so when I do a series of images they look like they belong together.

I'm a fan of yellow filtered images, they give a nice skin-tone and warmth to an image. I've tried a few plug-ins for photoshop like Alien Skin Exposure 3, and while they offer a lot of options I couldn't really get the effect I wanted.

So with some freely available actions and a lot of DIY I've finally managed to create a custom action I'm happy with. I won't bore you with the details of it, but at least show you what I'm talking about. The image below gives a side-by-side comparison of two pictures of my little monster. The image on the left is the original and the one on the right has my custom action applied.

As you can see the photograph is now warmer with whites appearing a cream colour. The change to the colours brings out a lot of definition (like the blades of grass) and while it loses some of the lighter blues it makes the darker more defined (so the jeans look a lot more detailed and textured).

Here's a short series of my favourite monster at our local park. After running around like a lunatic for several minutes he went from chewing/hiding my lens cap to picking flowers for his mum... and then forgetting what he was doing and crushing them in his huge baby hands :-)

The image at the start of this post is of my brother Paul back in Dublin, with the deceptively calm looking family dog Daggit. I've applied the same processing to his picture but have really put it in for a bit of home-sickness therapy :-) Hope the sunny weekend is treating you all well!