Radharc Images - Photography

I am flying…

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I made a point when I first started this blog that I would never use it to talk about photo gear or equipment except to perhaps swear really loudly at something that didnt work the way I wanted it to. I have no intention of going against this idea except to say that I do briefly touch on it.

taxi rank at Belfast International Airport
Last week I took a quick flight across the water to Liverpool for a couple of days and due to security restrictions and overall general paranoia, flying isnt the pleasure it used to be. So for a trip lasting 48 hours I wanted to travel as light as possible to keep within restrictive hand luggage restrictions. Im not exactly a tight arse but for 48 hours I dont want to spend 4 of that in check in queues and waiting at the baggage carousel.

hand baggage luggage size checker
Back in the day when I used to travel regularly I could turn up at an airport with bag 15 mins before the flight and just walk on. Even recently Ive taken a couple of 48-72 hour trips to the likes of Rome, Berlin, Krakow just for the purpose of taking photos, but in the last year or two it has just become a chore. I obviously dont have the dedication to queue in line to be the first irish suicide bomber! Besides which they still allow alcohol sales airside – isnt that flammable?

airport duty free shop

Anyway back to the hand luggage problem, for this trip I would be just using my Canon G9 and my tablet computer. Notice I said tablet computer (advent vega if you must know) rather than ipad. Not that Ive anything against the overpriced, under specced, restricted piece of male jewellry, I just want something that does everything I want it to and not what someone else says I need and not to bother about all that other stuff I dont really need as they know best.

ebook reader on a plane
There are always ongoing debates in photography about quality of equipment and how you dont need to spend a fortune on equipment to get good photos. I always tell my students that this is the case, with a large caveat. Its not necessary to have good equipment to get good photos but it is necessary to have good equipment to get consistently and repeatedly good photos.
Dont get me wrong I love my G9, Ive an underwater housing for it and its got me photos I normally wouldnt get but it is incredibly limited. People get tied up in the number of megapixels debate that camera companies bandy about like boys getting into a pissing up the wall contest (or something a lot less polite) without actually discussing the quality of those pixels.
Of course the overpowering argument is that why should I spend in excess of 50 thousand on equipment for a photography business when I could just buy a 500 quid compact and be done with it.
Come to think of it, why am I?

coffee and panini in the airport coffee shop
The advantage of using something like a G9 is that it generally doesnt attract the attention of the thought police, put on my rucksack, add trainers to a 40 year old(ish) man and and anorak and you can happily snap away looking like a complete loser. Change that to 10 grands worth of camera body and lens and its a short cut to a body cavity search.
Of course the converse argument is that with the high end kit people push their kids in front of the camera, with everything else they shy the kids away from the weird looking man.

passengers at departure gate
Id given myself a brief of documenting the journey and trying to use the camera with the limitations it has. Namely that its crap. Ok thats being unfair, the photos would have limited editorial use, they couldnt be used in low light conditions as the quality would be too poor to pass any agencies quality control and the total frame would have to be used as resolution is small as it is. Going back to the quality of pixels argument the dynamic range of the small cameras is very poor, what that means is that it doesnt handle both bright light and darkness in the same photo too well. Well it does but instead of being able to sell the pictures, I would just call them ‘art’ and add to the vast majority of my art collection and the ‘if this sells I’ll buy my friends a pint’. One such image is one I took in a bluebell glade in a woodland. I was walking down the hill and went on my arse and skidded the whole way down. Of course reaction was to hold the camera in the air and inadvertently fire off 9 frames a second for the whole journey. So I picked one ‘abstract’ and put it up for sale. I owe several people pints if it ever sells.

easyjet aircraft

boarding easyjet aircraft
A couple of current affairs issues were apparent, there were a number of people with big bags and one way tickets, signs of the recession here in Ireland and Ireland continuing with its greatest export, its people.

irish emigration
Then the usual of taking your water off you and then getting you to buy overpriced water airside which is a complete pain someone like me who is advised to take aspirin tablets to fly due to previous injuries and help avoid dvt. Security measure or profit making – hmmm maybe Bin Laden has shares in bottled water companies.

The journey was reasonably uneventful and quite painless thanks to the pre boarding cards so the blog represents a little storyboard of the up, down, turnaround come back trip.

From a technical point of view, the camera performed well but thats within very strict guidelines and limitations. If it was possible for me to sell 50 grands worth of camera equipment and just get away with a couple of compacts, then from a business perspective I would.
Of course thats not to say that images produced from compacts wont and dont sell, I’ve sold some compact images for reasonable prices but never for a double page spread or advertising use. I could argue that if the photo was really important then I wouldnt take it with a compact so how do I expect them to sell, or put another way, everything finds its price point.
Various stock sites sell images for a dollar or whatever the equivalent is, in the vast majority of cases the photographs are taken with cheap equipment and thats not knocking them, everything has a value and a price point but its unlikely to produce long term growth except for a chosen few mass producers. At the minute the UK editorial market (newspapers by and large) are paying a pittance for photos, so using compacts for this type of work seems to go along with the price point.

My issue is when other agencies sell images that take years of experience to produce, are researched well and are shot on high end equipment sell them for pennies regardless. There is a lesson to be learned there though, over the last 4 weeks I have been taking some photos with minimal setup (although still using high end camera and lens) to see how they get on with other agents in the uk market.
Not exactly a great plan of action but an interesting experiment in trying to tailor production costs for the price points. It will be interesting to see if on a per unit basis how they compare with the higher end production cost photos.

Speaking of experiments, I had planned a number of ‘Top Gear’ style photo challenges for last year which Ive moved back to this year, one of which was a travel from easterly point to westerly point in Ulster in one day (dawn to dusk around midsummers day) and take photos of each county inbetween along with sunrise and sunset (hopefully). The Top Gear show last night did the reverse in England, driving from west to east from dusk til dawn….
…watch this space.

more irish related stock photos here
more travel and transport stock photography here
more ireland stock pics here
more general daily life stock photography images here
more conceptual stock photographs here

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Leaving…. Streets of Belfast…

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No Im not emigrating dispite many offers of free one way passage to a country without an extradition treaty.

Ive mentioned in the blog before, my friend Stephen Maguire, a singer songwriter originally from Belfast but now based between Canada and here.
Ive photographed Stephen many times, mainly for his music promotional work as well as his latest CD “Irish Soul”. He even volunteered to act as model for me for some doctor type stock shots but the less said about that the better.
(Irish Soul is available on itunes – right Stephen, wheres that tour t-shirt you promised me!)

The gig and album photos have all been to a particular brief, with his last gig, it was in May Street Church so it was a mixture of promotional music photographs as well as showing something of the architecture of this old church. We have another couple of shoots planned which will emphasise the irishness of his music but not in the traditional view of the green leprechaun view of irishness. Stephen is from Belfast and there is no doubt that all of us of the same age carry some baggage with regard to this place. Its a place we love but its also a place where a lot of people emigrate from for various reasons, a lot of it in the past has to do with the troubles.
Some of us also emigrate for good reasons and Stephen is one of them. He met his Canadian wife Tera in Belfast whilst she was in intern for the local ice hockey team. I used to be involved in the supporters club for the team and thats how I came know Tera and then Stephen. As with everything in this small place you find out friends and families are intertwined and the whole ‘I recognise you from somewhere but I dont know where’ comments. Particularly if you have never met before, ever!
You may wonder what Im rambling on about but a couple of years ago Stephen gave me an acoustic version of his song ‘Streets of Belfast’. I thought it was a great piece to put to an AV slideshow of images of Belfast and got to work. I put the video up on youtube and my website and really forgot about it.
In his new album Steven has re-recorded the “Streets of Belfast” with full production, so I thought I’d rework the photo and audio slideshow as well with more up to date photos of Belfast. Ive put it up on youtube once again and the link is below so get a cup of tea or coffee and enjoy the next three and a half minutes (more later).

I was familiar with Streets of Belfast but I hadnt heard the rest of the latest album. Stephen like myself is fond of a long story or two so he was telling me about waiting for his flight home to Belfast before Christmas. As he was standing in the queue for check in, with all the thousands of people and delayed, cancelled flights, he saw a soldier in the queue in front of him. The guy probably had the dust from whatever combat area he had just come from still on him. Stephen overheard the guy saying something like ‘ma’am, I just want to get home’.
Looking from behind at his combat boots, camouflage trousers, kit bag, Stephen said he thought of me and said if I was there I would make a picture of that scene and it reminded him of his song on the new album ‘Leaving’.
So I got a copy of the album and it was a couple of days before I could sit down and listen to it properly. I played leaving over and over again. It tells something of a personal story for Stephen but it also rings true for many of us. Particularly poignant in the current economic climate in Ireland where once again we export our greatest natural asset, our people.
Of course its not just the physical act of leaving that the song applies to but for things like going to university, getting married etc.

Then it was a case of marrying the photos up to the video. It was an interesting project as the Streets of Belfast one was straightforward, tying the images there of a fixed place in with the song. The Leaving one had to have a good balance of not just Irish/Belfast images but also ones that would appeal on both sides of the Atlantic (and perhaps be recogniseable) as well as internationally.
As usual I put too many images in the original draft so there were a few refining emails then sending out the video to a few people to get their views. Ive included the final version below, hopefully it does the song justice, so go get another cup of tea or coffee and sit back and watch.

more irish related stock photos here
more ireland stock pics here
more general daily life stock photography images here
more conceptual stock photographs here


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