Sean's Blog: April 2006

Belmullet

Safely in Belmullet with the Camera Club and using the superbly expensive wireless! No shots taken as yet put planning on gettting up early if the weather is good. John the outgoing chairman is trying his best to coerce me into taking up his role, but it's not going to happen.

Flash Photography.

I've been perusing 2 sites in relation to use of battery powered flashes for adding to ambient recently. There's also a 3rd one that does monthly workshops, generally lighting related.
The first is Strobist, a site run by David Hobby of the Baltimore Sun. It covers using flash off camera in photojournalism but applies to anything. He's a Nikon user, but uses his flashes in Manual mode so any camera user can use the same setup to get similar shots.
The second (which I got from the first) is Planet Neil, which is based more on wedding photography and on camera flash.
Both are excellent reads and highly informative. Strobist is a blog and gets updated regularly. It's only up a short while and the content is continually updated. Planet Neil is more like a tutorial site and has a more finished feel.
The 3rd site I view less often is Dave Black's Workshops and is presented from a sports shooters view. His tutorial on shooting evening portraits is the best tip i've read in ages. I've yet to try it in the field but am really lookng forward to using it.

Widget Ahoy

A quick post from a blogger widget as a test!

Robbed

The other night our camper van was broken into. My new laptop, jacket, ipod, digital photo album and Daves bike jackets and odds and ends were taken. Camera stuff was hidden and safe. Thank God for small mercies. Also taken was my passport so Id to do a lot of running around to get an emergency passport so I could get home today. Im over the really angry, remorseful stage now. I felt there was an issue with the carpark we were in and didnt insist we move but live and learn. Also for the first I didnt remember to get insurance before coming. Too late now. Anyhow. Life goes on. Still have the old decrepid one at home....

All my photos are gone as they took the backup disk too. Which was the whole point of the trip. Sigh.

The 2nd annual european trip

As if I didn´t learn from last years trip´I hopped in the van with Dave Cooley again last monday to start a repeat journey of our ´fiasco´. There was one main exception and that was the inclusion of a day in Disneyland Paris in the schedule. We´ve done a few podcasts that I´ll post to give a diary of the trip rather than trying to write out stuff while drinking in a net cafe/bar in Santa Ponsa! At least we´re here and alive (despite numerous threats otherwise!). I´ll post a collection of shots like last year too, when I get time.

Lightroom: Links

I'm adding a few reference links here for people (myself included) to get to new lightroom material. I've also started to use del.icio.us tags too in my posts so I can have some form of categories for my posts.

Jack Nack's Lightroom posts in Adobe blogs

Photoshop News Lightroom coverage

delicious tags: lightroom, seansblog

Phone woes and wiles

During a dance frenzy during the Autamata soundcheck in the Roisin Dubh this evening, I managed to accidently throw my phone into the canal... How did this happen you might ask? Well I was kindof amusing Miles from Juno Falls (the support act) by dancing to the tune. I had my hands in my pocket and when I pulled them out somehow I caught the phone in my sleeve. A little arm waving later and the undetected phone launched into the air and plonked into the canal. "What was that?" I exclaimed running to the edge to see my Nokia 6680 sinking to the bottom fully lit up. I laughed, as did Miles. I mean what else could I do. I was a bit philosophical about it. I went in and shared my woe with the band. They were sympathetic at least!
I went out to the front bar and chatted to a few people. When I went back in I was playacting with Elton from Juno Falls (ex brando) and he noticed something going on outside. Paddy, Autamata's logistics guy, was on the outside of the rail of the canal with a contraption of his own design trying to get my phone out! I helped hold him and with a bit of determination and time we actually got the phone out!! Now I've dried it etc. but it's f*cked. The good thing though is that the SIM card is intact. I'd never get a new card in time for going to Europe on Monday otherwise. Cynthia (my missus) volunteered up her phone for me to use (it was mine once upon a time) which was very good of her!

Strobist

Strobist is a very cool site about lighting using battery flash. I think the link came through the Rob Galbraith forums. Of all the links related to flash this is amazing.