30/52

While in Portland we met with David of the Free Portrait Project. It was nice to meet someone who knew the area and with whom we shared a common interest. At the end of our first, rather eventful day, it was kind of nice to be meeting anyone. We wandered through the residential streets of Alberta looking for the perfect place to shoot. You can see some of those photographs on my post about Portland.

In exchange for the portrait David shot of my I also shot one of him. Actually I shot two. David’s project entails ‘One honest portrait, captured on film’ and he literally means, just one portrait. He only pressed the shutter twice, once for me and once for Richard. I took one photograph and then when he thought I was finished I took another. Sometimes this works and the second photo reveals a more honest, relaxed capture…but this time I wish I had followed David’s rules because the first photograph was the photograph.

I haven’t seen my portrait yet but keep an eye out on the project facebook page for our familiar faces :)

*We are now in week 35 and while it is clear that I have somewhat fallen off the portrait bandwagon, I hope to be able to share photos week by week again (if not every single week as I originally planned), and some retrospectively as well. 

Siobhan Rafter :: Behind The Scenes

Richard took some photos from my shoot with Siobhán. It’s funny to see things behind the camera from

another camera. It’s nice, I am rarely actually in any photographs these days! 

I do funny things like…

^ tippy toes ^

^ serious posture ^

^ weird flexy toes ^

I really love taking photos. I want to keep on keeping on with this thing I’ve got going. It makes me happy and nervous and excited (and scared) sometimes…which are all good things and will, I think, lead to even more good things. Siobhán’s photographs will be up next week…once her degree show hits the ground! 

15/52 (and 14 too!)

A portrait a week, every week, in 2013.

—Fiona & Nicole.

Being sick the second week of the Easter holidays and then Offset last weekend threw me for a loop and I never got a portrait posted last Sunday…but here I am, back on track with two for the price of one! It seems somewhat serendipitous too as I rarely mention Fiona without a quick ‘and Nicole!’ following or vice versa. 

These two lovely ladies sat opposite me for our second year of college and we became fast friends. They are funny, chatty and always upbeat. We still sit beside each other now and I value their advice and opinion about my work highly. In fact Nicole is pretty much my tutor this year. 

Fiona is a last minute kind of girl and she pretty much never sleeps…I have no idea how she survives. Nicole is so chilled out even when we’re coming up towards a deadline, she just knuckles down (eats loads of sweets!) and gets shit done without complaint. I am a steady worker and don’t like to leave things until the final hour so when we worked together on a college project this year I was, understandably, a little nervous. I need not have been worried though as the project couldn’t have gone better. Our different work methods meshed together and we all agreed that the final result was definitely better than anything we could have produced individually. 

These two girls have the sweetest hearts and I am so so glad we are friends. They are going inter-railing around Europe this summer and I am so excited for them, it is going to be such an adventure. 

PS Nicole has a tumblr, you should definitely go and have a peek. 

Yes.

It is finally, finally, beginning to feel like spring. And I could not be happier.

Today the sun shone and the chill in the wind was a little less chilling and I walked all over town, up and down and around and about running fake errands like visiting galleries and donating blood and attending talks. Errands are my favourite…for example, this week I got stupidly excited about the post office, seriously—roll your eyes folks—I love the post office. I think if I could run a business in which I just posted nice stuff to nice people I would be the happiest being going. Can someone tell me how to do that please? Maybe we could start a club, I post you stuff, you post me stuff…that’s just a pen pal isn’t it? I’m so silly sometimes and Spring is definitely bringing out the silliness.

After all the running around my lovely boy collected me from college and we had a Wagamama speed date before he rushed down to Roundwood to camp for the weekend. Life is pretty sweet (not least because I get to hang out with my favourite little munchkin tomorrow morning!).


I hope the Spring is peeking through wherever you are and that this weekend treats you kindly. See you on Sunday for Project 52 (weeks 14 & 15!). xo

This week’s Illustration Friday post is a good ’un, Kate Moross!

PS I have a little question…I have been thinking of setting up a facebook for this silly little blog and I was wondering if you would like that? Would it be a good way of keeping track of posts as they go up? Orrr would it be another pain-in-the-ass thing to follow on the www? 

11/52

A portrait a week, every week, in 2013.

—Monica.

I took this photo last week on Mother’s Day. Myself, Monica and Aoife went for breakfast. We talked about parenting, birth, each other, our family and relationships. It was really nice and thankfully occasions like this are not limited to a once a year tradition…my mother my sister and I regularly do things together. They both drive me crazy and I haven’t been given the nick-name ‘witch’ by Aoife for no particular reason but family wouldn’t be family without turbulence.
I know that someday I am going to be a great mother, and I have Monica to thank for that. She has shown me that it is hard and frustrating and constant but she has also shown me how rewarding, beautiful and fun it will be.
I am frustratingly awaiting independence and total self-sufficiency and I have Monica to thank for that too.  She has been patiently and selflessly teaching myself and my three siblings to look after ourselves for the past thirty years. We don’t thank her enough for that. I don’t. But I hope that the way we conduct ourselves, the relationships we hold dear, the way we read before bed and the fact that we can cook and clean (though we don’t always!) and shop show our mother what a tremendous job she did. I hope that the adults we have become reflect the childhood that she gave us.
The more I grow up and begin to resist the more challenging our relationship gets. To venture out into the world and grow into myself both Monica and I know that my siblings and I have to leave the safe home she has built for us and create our own.
After this period is over, when I have moved on, moved out and have begun building a life for myself, with children of my own, our relationship will be different yet again. Each phase is difficult but rewarding and once it begins to pass it becomes apparent how fleeting it was. I will never again be the baby she fed and shushed and rocked, or the little child who crawled onto her knees to read stories, or the pre-teen who watched tv curled up using her lap as a pillow. I take comfort in the hope that I will one day be able to watch her do the same with her grandchildren. 

Today I am wishing it was Summer.

Yesterday it rained all day. It looks likely that today will be the same. I can’t help but feel a sweeping sense of claustrophobia on days like these. The blue sky has replaced by a dense blanket of grey cloud and the air feels strange and still, almost dead—but not in that dead-heat kind of way. I would definitely welcome that dead dry heat (that is only ever found abroad) today.

I find myself longing for days like the one pictured above—which for the record wasn’t even warm—where life was less timetabled. These pictures are from my half of the photoswap and were taken back in September before we returned to college and work and endless deadlines. At the moment there is a constant list of things to be completed each day which I am hopelessly falling behind on.

Only a few more weeks until Easter when I can immerse myself in whatever I like (plus two essays…but lets not talk about those for the moment) for two entire weeks. I need those weeks. 

MOWGLI (the merchandise)

My friends are some seriously hot people, don’t you agree?

I haven’t laughed as much as I did on Saturday hanging out with KB, Mica & Lee, in a long time. Too long actually.

Check our their band Mowgli here. xo





PS KB’s not in the band…just a fan-come-model for the craic.

PPS I am genuinely considering just shooting on the Rollei after this roll, those square ones are such beauts. What do you think?

Distillers Press

We have a letterpress studio in college. Most of the time I probably don’t realise just how lucky I am…but with this place I definitely do. It is unlike anywhere I have ever been. 

A box of baby jesus

A project is in the works. It’s big and scary and very very exciting. These are scans from the last forgotten roll of film…way back when it was a silly idea we had no wherewithall to comprehend. These photos make me laugh. The whole experience was very ‘modern family-esque’. 

Love Love Love

 My beautiful cousin married her beautiful husband in a beautiful church on a beautiful day in Dublin on the second last Saturday of September.  The day was stunning. The ceremony was poignant and one of my aunts welled up as Katie walked down the aisle. I had butterflies, I couldn’t help but feel so nervous and SO excited for herself and Ado. As her mother, my aunt, Anne read a blessing for the couple I myself had tears in my eyes. Love is seriously the best.
We came out of the church to blinding sunshine and happy faces. There were drinks and there was food and there was definitely dancing. But most importantly there was so much joy. Katie was floating all day long. The speeches were gorgeous. I could not help but think of how one day it will be me up there speaking as my sister gets married, or my brother or myself. That’s cool. That’s love. Katie & Ado I wish you all the love in the world as you being this exciting new adventure. xo

Rewind II

The second of my forgotten rolls of film was taken way back in June. R & I tried to convince our friends to come and hang out on the beach but they were being lazy so we went on our own and met up with them after. The day had been really hot and despite the cool evening, the water was really warm. It felt weird and kind of wrong but we waded out pretty far anyway enjoying the strange sensation. We watched another couple of people run out deep enough to swim in the water—they were more prepared, or eh braver, than us. 

Rewind

…back to June, when I told you how Eoin & I made Elderflower ‘champagne’ and cordial for the Habitat party. Well remember how I took loads of photos and then put them into the fridge and kept putting off developing them or scanning them? And remember how I then shot three more rolls and did the exact same thing? No, just me? Ok well I did, and in my fridge is where they sat until I finally bought a dark bag and then I finally got some more fix and developer and got down to it.

We used Hugh’s recipe for both. The cordial has a shocking amount of sugar in it but is pretty delicious. So delicious that we drank all the bottles before the party and had to go buy more. I’m looking at Eoin here…

The sparkling wine or whatever it is was kind of weird, kind of more like beer and not very alcoholic. And we accidentally left four bottles of it in our garage for much longer than we should and it went off and smelled gross. Not cool. On the night though we mixed it with a little cordial to sweeten it up and it was delicious. Or so everyone told us anyway!

Let me tell you though folks, they were worth the wait those four rolls. This is only the beginning, there’s much more to come. 

anticlimactic

These are the scans of the negatives I developed myself. I obviously did something wrong cause these guys are liney as fuck. I don’t know about you but I kind of like it. (although not as much as I love the first roll I shot and got developed in the shop, they were beauts.)

Update: I just googled my issue and came up with this thread where a guy had a similar problem which was the result of a mechanical problem (loading the film wrong). I think per chance I may have done this... oh well, you live and learn don’t you?

I finally got around to using that rolleiflex a couple of weeks ago. It's beyond uneconomical with film and processing being pretty pricey but I couldn't get over the results. I have NEVER had a first roll turn out so well. It's way more manual than the AE-1 (ie totally manual basically) but I actually found it easier to just aperture/exposure settings without the light metre. I think I rely to heavily on that with the AE-1. It also probably helped that we had some really bright clear days to shoot on (unlike yesterday!)

 

(that's Lauri... he sits beside me in college!)