Here’s a few recent live shots of Meteor Awarding singer, Imelda May.

Duke Special is always a treat musically when he comes around. Still from a work point of view, it’s a long day. By the time you’re done, you realise you’ve been on your feet for 10 hours with no real break. Tonight was no different in that regard and despite standing on a high stool peering into a bunch of cables an hour after I’ve normally finished, I still enjoyed the night.

And yes, I probably have too much of the centre focus in the shots, but I couldn’t find other crops I liked at short notice!

The first airing of my ‘snappy new logo’ as Leon likes to call it. There’s a white version and a black version. Anyhow, the real reason we’re here is for Akil. Akil is a former member Jurassic 5 and tonight brought his superb rapping skills to the Roisin Dubh.

Update. After Seeing these white logos loose a little detail in the web address, I got Leon to bump up the size. Looks better in the new ones!

The Followers of Otis were the unplanned extra support act from last Friday Night. I popped off a few quick snaps before it got busy and real mixing was required. Again, I’m just testing the Slideshow plugin. I think I may have it nailed from an automated point of view!

oops, spoke too soon!

Okay seem to be on top of it at last!

I’m testing some gallery code I’ve built for Lightroom. I wanted a way to show may images at once, without a 3rd party product, but still fit into a post.
I spent ages figuring out a way that allows me to preview the slideshow in Lightrom, but still allowed me to export to the web and be able to cut and paste the code into a post, while calling everything from a subdirectory. I didn’t mind a small bit of editing (e.g. editing the location of the xml file that calls the photos), but I did mind having to hand edit the xml. Of course I had a crash just as it all got done!Anyway, it’s done.

So, here’s a few shots from the beach.

Generally I have “Mandatory Credit” in the copyright section of my files that go out..
Still most newspapers tend not to print credits. And such was the case last Friday for me.
My Disconnect 4 shot was in the Irish Times ‘The Ticket’ supplement. The shot is a promo shot for the band, so this is a normal use for it. It just would’ve been nice to have a credit.

I managed to get out shooting on St Patricks day with my freshly converted 400D. It was a joy to be finally able to shoot infrared imagery handheld! I’m gagging to do some IR portraits with flashes too! Anyhow I visited Dunguaire Castle and went on a trip around the Burren. Along the way I took in the Martello Tower at Rine, St Colmans Abbey, Corcomroe Abbey and Poulnabrone. Eventful!

Seeing as the nice weather continued, I went out to the beach with family in tow yesterday. I’m a big fan of some beach shots of Chris Orwig’s family so I ran around the freezing cold water with camera in hand, looking for some nice shots. Below is one of the many shots I really like of my son Matthew, aka the cutest boy in the world-sorry all you other parents out there, but you have to face the truth on this one

And another!

I love seminars and seeing the work of good photographers. The SWPP certainly promotes education and I’m all for more of it. While I only shoot a handful of weddings, I still like to see what people are up to. A fashion edge, with strong compositional lines and form are the hallmark of a David Beckstead photo. I thoroughly enjoyed today, despite getting only 2 hours sleep last night in order to travel to Dublin for the seminar. It’s now 24 hours since that sleep started, so you can imagine I’m pretty tired now. On that note, I’ll leave you with a link to David’s website.

Yes!
On the way to the Grand Slam!

Anyhow, before our great win against Scotland, I was off recording video. 25 mins of an introduction to LRB Portfolio 2.1 in fact.
I’ve to edit the User Guide before this goes out though. I’ll be posting the video to Lightroom Blog shortly.

The rest of the day was spent organising upcoming shoots. They’re for upcoming projects like books, portfolio and to have new material for tutorials.

I’m off to a David Beckstead seminar tomorrow, looking forward to that, despite the fact that I’ll be leaving my house at 6:15am. I mixing tonight so it’ll be 3am when I get in.. Not so good. I’m the passenger on the trip up to Dublin, so I’ll get some kip on the way.

I’m putting together plans for new books, but I’m keeping the details under wraps. Suffice to say that one will be Lightroom related, with another more general book. I’ve also got a half written Web Engine guide, which was done for Lightroom 1 galleries, which I’ll update for version 2 as I find time.
Speaking of time, I’m really trying to manage my time more effectively. As a lot of my work is night based, I’m a stay at home father, minding my son during the afternoons. The mornings are slowly becoming part of my day again, and I’m finding it easier to sleep straight after work.

I rang Advanced Camera Systems yesterday and was told that my Canon 400D IR conversion should be happening today! Yeah! I’d been on the fence for ages about getting a camera converted. Ultimately I was choosing between my 400D and my 30D and then selling the other. While the 30D is a better camera for most things, it does lose out on the sensor cleaning front. My main issue with the 400D is with seeing the focus point in a gig situation, but this is fine for landscape. In the end I sent on the 400D. I’ve been shooting using a Canon 28mm 2.8 with Hoya R72 filter for a while now, so I’m really looking forward to trying it with a range of lenses.

Longridge also rang me today to let me know my new mount cutting system was on the way. I was impressed by the demo at Focus and ordered one when I got home. It’ll be here in a few days and I’ll give it a once over with some fresh prints!

I’ve finished a lot of client work recently and sent it on out. Always a good feeling to see smiling faces and getting delighted emails.