Competition
I did well in the Emotion competition in the Galway Camera Club. First in Mono, with First and Third in Colour. It was hard not to get something in Mono though-there were only 2 entries, a rather disappointing amount. Colour fared better so I was glad to do well there.

Moustache
Mouvember is Moustache month, where people grow a moustache for charity. As it’s nearly over I took a few quick shots of Keith from Disconnect 4 (http://www.myspace.com/disconnect4) with his:

Shot in ETTL mode using an STE2. It was tending to overexpose, so I had to knock back the exposure compensation. I’d have done it in manual, but my Elinchrom Skyport transmitter is AWOL.

Fashionesque
I did a shoot with Caz from the band Oddity with some of her cool stage outfits. A bit of experimenting was done with diffusers and deflectors was done, some good, some bad. At the end I decided to shoot some high key style for a change, so here’s a quick shot of Caz fooling around. (Yes, I know it’s not true high key, because the average tonality in the image isn’t above middle grey!)

Book
Colours proofs with a few tiny bits to be added (page references really) are due this week and then my bit is done. It’s been hard work and with a bit of luck I’ll be able to post a cover in the next week or two.

London
I’m going to be in London for the Strobist London Seminars. Well just the Saturday! I’ll be meeting and staying with Martin Evening and hopefully will get to see Jeff Schewe before I leave on Monday. Drop a note in the comments if you’ll be there!

Timelapse
I did intend on getting more timelapse stuff done this week, but only got the Tamnyard one done. If the weather has good clouds and little rain, I’ll be out the backroads and byways trying to get some more (with loads of fresh, reasonably new, batteries!)

In what was originally a recce, Paul Feeney and I went up into deepest Mayo for a location Paul had seen once in the fading light of day. Much better in daylight, I must say! Click the image for a larger version on Flicker.
As I was waiting on the light firing off test shots, my battery died. “No problem” I thought, “I have a spare”. I’d taken a battery off the charger on the way out, so I put it in the camera. I figures that seeing as the winds was strong and the clouds really moving, this would be a great chance for a nice timelapse. So I set the camera up and pulled out my Canon TC80N intervalometer and set it to 5 sec intervals. 80 shots (small JPEG, I might add) later, the fresh battery is completely dead. A full fresh battery with no flash can to 1000 shots, so I was annoyed, but there was nothing I could do.
Anyhow at 24fps, the final 75 shots take a whopping 3 seconds to view, rather that the 30 mins compressed to 15 secs I had intended. Clicking through to Vimeo will allow you to view a HD version.

Tawnyard from Sean McCormack on Vimeo.

I’m delighted to announce my Muscle and Fitness image won Gold in the SWPP Oct monthly competition.

The problem with keeping a blog is finding time to keep writing. Currently I’ve so much on it’s not funny. My book editor (the 3rd one on the book) is leaving so it’s been a mad crush trying to squeeze the last few bits out. I’ve had to do a Glossary, Resources and Acknowledgements page in the last 2 days, along with prepping and supplying more images. Coupled with my normal night work mixing sound and nursing a sick kid, it’s been easy. The preceding weeks have been filled with books edits, an LRB Grad Filters update and a long awaited update to LRB Portfolio that went out yesterday.

I’ve also been trying to keep up with my volunteer duties, moderating for Adobe Lightroom Help and for Lightroom Forums. I’m still only finding my feet on the forum as a mod. Of course, I’m also keeping Lightroom Blog up to date as well as posting to Lightroom News!