Things on my mind today:
The things we fear most, rarely happen.
The things we dream to achieve, we rarely achieve, but in trying we achieve things we cannot dream.
There is only one road to travel and with each step we take we create a new one and destruct the used one.
Two photos today:
Tokyo Night
Trees need to cheer the fuck up
That time of week to review the posts to Superosity in the past 7 days to choose 6 of my favourites. This week the 6 to catch my eye are not in colour, although both black and white are colours.
Hope you like them. give the photographers some love and click through to their Flickr streams. Thanks for posting to the group!
Super eye candy from Superosity
The photographers from left to right – ando.b – Rajagopalan Sarangapani – ewitsoe – Tunguska RdM – shin2600z – BlemishedEye
And Sunday morning would not be Sunday morning without some music to listen to –
It is always great pleasure to look through the blur will save the world group. The standard of blur photography there is amazing. Here are 6 of those which grabbed my attention in the past few weeks. Thanks to the amazing photographers for posting and sharing, and of course, inspiring.
Blursuit
To see more of these artists great work, click through. From left to right – kim by the water – kokorage – alexbworld – zanimo (away) – Sharon Reid2010 – yell saccani
Blur music
Hello to all. Not posted a selection of my favourites from my Flickr group Superosity for a while. Looking through the pool this 6 stood out for me. Thanks to all the photographers who post to the group. If you click on the links below, you can get to their streams. Thanks.
6 Superosity Favourites
Thanks to the great photographers for sharing their work. From left to right – StephenCairns – Dave Hoefler – cedric blanchon – Sarah Jarrett – Dan Cronin^ – kaniths
And some music to wash it all down with.
And now for the camera that never leaves me. Here are a selection of my own recent favourites taken with my iPhone. More of these can be seen on my iPhone Flickr account.
Peer Pressure
I took this on Saint Patrick’s weekend in Dublin. While waiting outside a shop for my wife, the flight of this flock of birds overhead drew my attention away from all the revellers in green on the street.
On a night like this
This was taken from the front passenger seat of my father’s car as he drove us into the city centre to celebrate my brother’s birthday. It was an awful, wild night as you can see. Stopped at the traffic lights, the colourful reflections in the rain attracted me. However, once I ran it through Instagram, I realised it had to be in black and white. I will always remember this for my father asking me “what the hell are you doing now?” “What are you taking photographs of?” “This!” I replied!
Never waking
Taken while waiting for the Luas tram to take us into the city centre of Dublin. I was excited at the photo opportunities ahead. I had the DSLR around my neck and the iPhone in my hand. Looking around, looking for reflections, I found this steel column and what you see is what I saw. There’s my wife in front, looking at me taking another photograph!
Certainty
Dublin was packed on the holiday weekend. So many people, so many tourists, so many chances to snap, snap, snap. This handsome boy appeared in front of me. I snapped.
Pr.edestined
Out walking with my brother on Cork’s Lee Fields, we passed this tree, this bare tree with a path stretching off from it, like a rebellious branch. We walked around a hundred yards, climbed an old gate and crossed the road. The tree stayed there.
The tempation to tilt this man over the edge is great
An escalator doing its job.
Thanks to all for following this blog, re-blogging it, commenting and visiting. I appreciate it a lot. Happy Easter.
Neglected blur is never a good thing. You got to nurture it, make it feel loved. And in that spirit here are four I love. The group has many more that I am sure you will love. Get over there and save the world. It needs saving….
Bountiful blur
These are the four photographers – Red Lipgloss – GabyLopez – Marianna Di Ferdinando – serap günay Make sure to check out the rest of their streams – you will love them.
Music
Have been so busy these past few weeks that I have not had time to group together a selection of my favourites from Superosity or Blur will Save the World. Time to correct that now. This week I have chosen a theme – portraits. And from this theme I have selected six – each with their own merit. The thing for me about portraits is being seen and wanting to be seen, wanting to make a connection. These six have that.
What Superosity did next
Thanks to the following photographers for sharing their work in the group – bmahesh – Justin Amoafo Photography – J a n . B i s h o p. – adzscott – RenaGinz – Jonathan Kos-Read
Music for a rainy Easter Sunday
This week had a lot of blur on my own streams. Nothing new in that I guess, but I am working towards building up a body of blur with a similar theme. The theme is apparent to anyone viewing these images. They are not the most difficult images to compose. All you need is a wall for people to pass by. Click, click then and drag it all into Lightroom and slide. Talking of Lightroom; this week I was screaming at it. For some strange reason on Wednesday night, it decided to delete an image I had posted on Wednesday morning. An image that had gathered many faves and comments. So, Lightroom and I are parting ways on uploading to Flickr. In future, I will do it independently. But Flickr has a messed up uploader which can try your patience. Oh, the world of technology does not make things easier all the time you know.
OK, here are some of my favourite images of the week:
The corridor of blur
Another image taken in the corridor where I work. This one was of a student waiting to enter class. I saw him from far off and knew that if I framed it right I could line up a good shot. The trick is to point the iPhone down and then pop it back up quickly, shocking the lens with the sudden rush of light and resulting in a blurred up image. Tall people make the best blur figures too; tall skinny people. Oh and have the iPhone on silent – that camera clicking sound….
Coincidences
Lines! I love lines. I love shadows. I love the sun. The sun treats Ireland with scorn. Abandons it. Hides behind clouds. But when it does come out, it lights up my world. Simple photograph this. Waiting to cross the road. Yes, look right, look left, but if you are a photographer you are looking up, looking down too. And looking down I saw this. How could I not take a photo of it?
Mr. Whippy
A spoon. A spoon I found in my bedroom. Having two little kids you can find the strangest things in the strangest of places, and if, if you find them, you are lucky. Things disappear a lot with kids. I love reflections and spoons distort and reflect so well. You can see my hand and iPhone in the reflection.
And on to the DSLR. Shots taken last Saturday (Feb 23). Some of these are visible to the right. Here are others.
This is the wall of a sports clothing store in Cork city centre. There is a windowless red facade. I sat on concrete bench opposite and s discreetly as possible clicked as passersby passed by. These are of a mother and daughter.
A long-legged blonde with a large handbag walking into the frame
Mother and daughter
Mother and daughter 1
Mother and Daughter 2
Here’s to a great week. Thanks to all for coming to this blog and to my Flickr streams. I appreciate it a lot.
Looking back on the images I posted to flickr this week I have chosen the following ones as my favourites of the 14 I posted to both accounts.
What ties us, you say, is not a knot
This was taken aboard a small tourist boat in a lagoon in Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. A lagoon should be a peaceful place, but there were too many boats, too many tourists like me. This rope was lying on the front of the boat, its frayed texture attracting me. This image lay in my archives since being in Vietnam last year. This week I ran out of new images and had to raid those archives. This was one which caught my attention. Now, of course the image is over processed (Snapseed is a fine piece of software), but I do like the result.
My horse just left town with my man on it. I am not alone, I have you in my sights.
The thing with the iPhone is that you always have a camera with you. And like a good old-fashioned gun slinger, you got to learn to draw that weapon fast when the image appears. This long-legged lady bounded towards me as I was sitting in the reception area at work. I whipped the phone out, kept it at seat level and snapped as she walked past. I just knew I would love the result.
skinny boy solo walk
I love the corridors in work. Light streams in so nicely and by pointing the iPhone down and quickly turning it back up and clicking you can get some really, lovely, streaky blur shots. And what better for making people look skinny – well blur of course!
Perry Como
On the little walks on my breaks in work I have the iPhone at the ready and shoot as I go. I am scanning the scenes ahead, trying to fix on interesting looking characters. This guy, sombre and anxious looking, approached . The huge stone wall behind gives a nice background to the image. Why the Perry Como title? Not sure, but when I was a little boy we used to listen to a lot of Perry Como – and one of my favourite songs of his is Catch a falling star, which came to mind when I saw this guy.
Arousal
An old one i had been meaning to post for a while. I took this in the airport in Berlin while killing time. The sun was obliging and the result of the light on the metal is quite pleasant.
I wonder what images I will post here next Sunday.
Someone said to me “ya, it’s great that you post your favourite photographs from your two groups, but why don’t you post more of your own work on your blog?” Got me thinking. So here goes four of my own favourites from this week on Flickr. Two from my iPhone account and two from my real photograph account on Flickr.
The first one I chose is this one of railings on the seafront promenade down in Cobh. I like how the out-of-focus look; it gives it an abstract feel. Converting it to black and white seemed the natural thing to do to highlight the lines and to heighten the contrast of the black on the white.
Requires willpower
The next one from my real flickr account is this colourful blur shot taken in Cork city centre a few weeks back. Blur isolates and harmonises colour so beautifully at times.
Aroma
Then on to the fauxtography, the iphoneography, the funography. Two images. The first is photographic luck. The large man approaching me on the street walked right into my picture frame and the look of intent and purpose on his face and the street lights flanking him; well I could not have had it composed better. Thank you, Mr. Stranger.
I have a plan
The next image I have chosen is another blur shot. Another type of shot that works out rarely – that blurred out bicycle passing. As I was getting out of the car, I saw the cyclist heading towards me. I stopped in my tracks, iPhone ready, waiting. Trying to look discreet, but failing. The cyclist passed and I clicked and here is the result. Oh, I was asked why I placed full stops in the middle of words. I like to disto.rt.
stutterin.g
Thanks to all for visiting my accounts, leaving comments and most of all for inspiration. Have a ding dong Sunday.
Musical accompaniment
