Over the last few years, I’ve been progressively staying longer at Focus on Imaging. It started with do it one day, 4 flights and hanging around in aiports. Next, it was one overnight, then this year, I stayed 2 nights. I arrived into the hall about 3pm on Monday, and by closing, I’d done most of the things on my list. That list? Look at the new Elinchrom Ranger Quadra system, get the Drew Gardner DVD, look at Portrait Albums and frames. I was also meeting Lightroom Author and fellow Lightroom Help Mod Richard Earney. One other person I met was Jonathan Bailey, Associate Publisher at GMC.

So with that done, I was essentially free for the next 2 days! As well as meeting Richard, I also met Rod Wynne-Powell and John Beardsworth. John seems very straight and serious on the web, so it was a delight to find him a gentle giant. As the show ended, he offered to drive me to my hotel. After a while of getting lost, I turned on data roaming on the iPhone and got us there in the end. From there we found a great little pub for food and a pint. After the food we moved to let the local darts contingent have our table!

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent doing generally looking about and taking in seminars, something that’s not possible on a single day trip. I saw quite a few interesting ones including those from Damian McGuillicuddy (a few times!), Doug Gordon, Joe Cornish, Duncan McEwan, Paul Gallagher, Chris Burfoot and Adam Duckworth. Quite a mix there between people and landscape, my 2 main photographic interests.

I also managed to meet Dublin art nude photographer Ciaran Whyte, someone else I know from online forums. It’s always good to put faces to names and Ciaran was no exception.

From a networking point of view, it was great to meet Mark and Debbie Cleghorn. Mark is with the same publisher as me, so it was great to get advice and help from them both. I also met with Mike McNamee and will be starting a new article for Professional Imagemaker on Lightroom addons. Just before leaving I was also talking to Brian Kruse from onOne software. 4 of their 6 plugins are now usable with Lightroom via round trip, similar to the current Aperture plugin system.

By Wednesday afternoon, I was pretty bored and spent a bit of time talking with some of the models at the SWPP stand, both socially and for getting contacts for future work. All in all though, it was great, but next year I’ll only be doing 2 days.

I’ve been pretty happy with my Canon G9 as a compact. It’s handy for out and about, and can even be used for ‘pro’ strobist shooting with my Skyport triggers. I especially like that it has a Raw mode, so seeing this made me this about a change:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9884-9914
“Canon has separately announced that a firmware update, expected mid-March 2009, will bring RAW format capture to this camera. A companion update to Canon’s Digital Photo Professional software will enables its RAW files to be processed.”

As it has a longer zoom, it’s making me tempted.

Joey L is just back from the Omo Valley in Ethopia and has posted a behind the scenes video. It’s good fun, but be warned, there’s a goat killing in the middle.

Joey L in Ethiopia from Joey L on Vimeo.

My sister and brother in law are visiting. I had to slip out for an hour to help someone. and when I got back I found the house abandoned. Seeing as I was no longer the host. Being a miserable grey day, I settled down to work through some tutorials on Lynda.com. Just as I was going onto another section, a little beam of light shone through the blinds and I peeked out.
The Sun had broken through the cloud and was rapidly heading for the horizon. Being in the city means there’s little to photograph, but I decided that if I didn’t try, I’d have nothing anyway. So I went to Ballyloughane beach. It can be hit or miss. And today was hit. I shot only 26 shots, but I’m really happy with them, In fact, running through them in Lightroom, I can see that I would’ve made a nice timelapse!
Next time!

This shot involved a little jumping on rocks to prevent my runners getting wet! Normally when I come to Fanore I bring wellies and wade about as a I shoot. I didn’t have them with me as Fanore was a last minute decision. Still I love going there as the tide starts to go out in the evening.

Paul suggested this would be a nice place for a timelapse.. except for my missing intervalometer batter..

Hand fired (ouch)

I was out yesterday running around Co. Clare with pauld70. It was my turn to do the driving and I’m sure Paul observed how impatient I am with slow drivers. And being Sunday, the ‘Sunday Drivers’ were out in force yesterday. So after driving behind a whole series of 60kmph drivers, we eventually arrived at Liscanoor. The tide was on the way in so we couldn’t get across to the beautiful flat rocks that have appeared in previous Liscannor shots. We did gets some shots down by the pier with the tide coming in over the rocks. I did use a polariser to slow down the shot, but I think I really need one of those 10 stop ND filters!

There’s a bit of a tizzy over people proclaiming their Competition results from the SWPP Monthly competitions. So to clarify to those reading, each month the SWPP has a monthly competition. There are basically 4 scores in the competition U: Unclassified (not good enough standard for competition), B: Bronze (acceptable Quality), S: Silver (Good Quality image, but lacking in some way) and G: Gold (Merit standard, the best). Receiving a Gold puts you forward for the yearly awards and gets you a nice certificate.

Some of the SWPP members have been blogging about their great Bronze and Silver awards, but in truth, these are meaningless as awards. They are competition scores and only the Gold is worth its weight. So if someone is calling themselves ‘Award winning’ with silvers and bronzes from the SWPP, they are not telling the whole story. Ultimately only the Gold has meaning, but even then it’s only the end of year awards that are truly the SWPP Awards.

Anyhow, it was nice to get the Gold for what is one of my favourite Travel images. It was even nicer to have good news in the midst of my recent sadness. I did get silvers and bronzes too, but I won’t be talking about them.

I’ve been merely passing time the last few days. Mostly stuck in front of the computer or sleeping to keep my mind off things. I’ve pretty much wrapped up V2.0 of LRB Portfolio, including the user guide rewrite that I dread so much. I’ll be sending the release candidate to testers shortly and then I’ll be off to bed for a few hours before going to Dublin for the funeral tomorrow (as in Friday). Dublin is no longer home. It hasn’t been for so long. I’m in Galway since 93 and my son is Galwegian through and through. So going back there can be arduous. I don’t really know the roads there anymore, and I hate driving up there, which makes it even more unpleasant. But I have to go. I had time to be with my Grandad over the last year, so I don’t have regrets about not seeing him, or having him see Matthew, because of that. Still it won’t hurt any less..

Anyhow, I’ll stop before I get morbid, and there is still work to be done. Here’s a shot that is actually from the middle of a time lapse sequence. I liked it enough to use as a shot in it’s own right, even if it is only a 2.5MP version! I found it while considering shots for a ‘Night’ competition.

I’ll post more of the Connemara images when I get back. It’ll be a funny few days I suspect.

My grandfather passed away about an hour ago. Expect things to be quiet here for a bit.