London Photowalk

Every so often I get itchy feet and feel the need to get lost for a day. I usually do this in London; its the nearest biggest city and I used to live and work there. Dublin my be my home town, but London is a close second. When I walk, I photograph. My favourite place is the South Bank, then accross to St Pauls and then back to Trafalgar Square and, when it is open, I find myself in the Photographers Gallery sipping coffee.

No better place!

Do you go on photowalks? Are you signed up for Scott Kelby's World Wide Photowalk this year? I'd love to hear your experiences of going out and just shooting the world as it presents itself to you, leave a comment and let me know!

Photographs Tell Stories

I have never liked just taking one photograph when I can take two, or two when I can take three.  As you can tell I like my photographs to tell a story. Well you can imagine how delighted I was to find this little gem of an app for the iPad and iPhone; Strip Design by Vivid Apps. Its a great way to tell a story.

This is one from the inaugural #curryclub

Enjoy!

Shooting Rebecca on her birthday

Rebecca is a wonderful young lady that just turned 12. To mark this ocassion Paul, her Dad asked me to photograph Rebecca and her friends in the studio.

The brief was a number of different outfits... formal, beach and pyjama... We had the studio for three hours. Seems like a long time but when you have seven teenagers, that time just flies by like there is no tomorrow!

Here are some of the shots from the day

We have the formal shots...

We have the beach shots...

We have the pyjama party shots...

And here is a behind the scenes look at the shoot...


Rebecca's Birthday Shoot from noel hannan on Vimeo.
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A great day was had by all and afterwards Paul, Rebecca's Dad, and I enjoyed a thirst quenching pint in a local pub!

Congratulations and a big thanks to Rebecca and all her friends for being great sports and no doubt models of the future! And to Gareth Davies Studio in Wokingham for providing a fabulous environment to shoot in.

#curryclub update... Film results are in!

We had our first #curryclub photo shoot last month. I had the auspicious task of organising it. We had three great models; Lou, Rhianne and Elan.

I decided to make it interesting and set a theme. I chose 'film' and asked all the photographers to take one roll of film. We all shoot digital, so I thought it would be interesting to see how we would get on with traditional materials and cameras.

I brought along my trusty Bronica ETRSi, but I didn't use it; I did shoot through it though. Here are the images.

Glyn, shot through a Bronica ETRSi

But the idea was to shoot a roll of film. I wanted to do something different. I shot with a Holga; one of those plastic cameras. It has a hotshoe so it did trigger the studio lights. This was interesting, because firing the shutter there was two distinct sounds; one when the shutter fired and one, presumeably, when the shutter armed again. This second click fired the trigger again. Unusual.

Elan and Rhianne

Elan and Rhianne

Yorick

Yorick again

Lou

A Happy Accident!

What was interesting about shooting fim was the waiting for it to be returned. I shot a roll of Kodak Portra 120 film colour negative film that I had at the back of the fridge in the garage. I had no idea how it was going to come out because it certainly was past its sell by date. Also, there is no setting the ISO on the Holga. Its a zone focus, one of those lenses that has little pictures on it, you know the ones; a head, a full body, a mountain, that sort of thing. All things being equal, I was not expecting crystal sharp photographs. And before you ask... the double exposures were meant!

Shooting film again was great fun, I would recommend it to anyone and everyone!

Guest Blogger Rosie...

Rosie is no stranger to this blog; I posted some of her photographs when she began her Duke of Edinburgh Award. She has taken some great images over the last year or so. Photography is like any other artform; the more you practice it, the better you get. Rosie has shown that she has indeed practised and she has indeed improved. The depth and composition of her images has come along way since her last post (hopefully this will not be her last post here!) It was a pleasure and an honour to be a small part of her great achievement.
Here she is in her own words and images, enjoy.
 

 The beach at Littlehampton in sepia brings out the

contrast between the pebbles and menacing sea.

Peony in my garden showing different layers of

texture from velvet edges to a dark interior.

Forget-me-not in and out of focus.

I like the variation of detail and blur.

Buds and blooms.

Baby blue with white and pink shade.

Littlehampton bench used as shelter from a seaside shower.

Bench and people silhouetted against a brightening sea.

Busy beach at Littlehampton.

Paddling a long way out.

Using black and white adds age and character

to an otherwise standard scene.

The beautiful twinkling sea in contrast

to the rambling seaweed.

My thanks to Noel for mentoring me in learning a new skill for my Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award.

Thank you Rosie, and I wish you all the best in your photographic career!
Noel

#curryclub shoot results...

There is a group of us that gets together every month or so for a curry. We have a beer, great food and chat about photography and anything else that takes or fancy. At the last curry night, we decided to get together for a shoot every month and then go for a curry. Last weekend saw the inaugural #curryclub photo shoot. Here are the shots I took.

I organized the first shoot and decided, with a little help from Gareth, to theme it 'film'. Us photographers could interpret that as we would, I also asked that we each shoot a roll of film, more about that later...

We had three models on the day, Elan, Rhianne and Lou.

Rhianne + Elan

Elan + Rhianne

During the morning session I shot Elan + Rhianne as a very well dressed couple. Elan is an actor, so to him 'acting' was easy and Rhianne just followed his lead. Their chemistry on set was fantastic.

 

Elan The Photographer

Keeping the 'film' theme going, in the afternoon session I got Elan to play the part of a photographer shooting Rhianne. This was great fun and again both Elan and Rhianne proved to be very natural in front of and 'nehind' the camera.

Part of the deal for Elan was that we would provide a selection of headshots for his portfolio for his interviews and auditions. This was my offering.

Elan

The shot above is more or less straight out of camera. A few tweaks in Lightroom, but thats all. I then started playing around with in it the iPad app 'Snapseed' by Nik Software. They make great software for the photographic world and their iPad app is no different. It is very, very good.
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Elan (with a little help from Snapseed)

And in this shot you can see we had two Profoto softboxes to either side of Elan and Rhianne and Octabox on a boom and a white seamless backdrop. This was over in the great Gareth Davies Studio in Wokingham. If you get a chance to use the studio, do so, just don't ask whats in the cupboard...

The behind the scene shot of Elan + Rhianne

We also had Lou, a confirmed 'Goth' young lady. Lou is relativley new to modelling but gave us some great photos on the day. Here she is against a background of stars that I added in in post in Photoshop. I also did some minor retouching a la Scott Kelby's new book 'Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers'. I used a Wacom tablet for the first time, takes a bit of getting used to but wow, does it make a difference.
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Lou

The behind the scene shot of Lou

This was the set up we used for shooting Lou. A pair of Profoto softboxes to either side and a beauty dish overhead. This is David shooting Lou with his 'Alas poor Horatio...' skull. Very suitable for a goth...

A big thank you to our models; Lou, Rhianne and Elan. They worked tirelessly all day for us on a TFCD basis, (we did feed and water them too). To Gareth for having a great studio. To Catherine and Katy for providing the wonderful lunch. And to the members of the #curryclub that were there on the day, Gareth, Glyn, David, Brian, Dave and me. To those that couldn't be there, you were missed and hope to see you on the next shoot.

Now there was one other thing... Shooting a roll of film. This was interpreted in many different ways. One photographer used an iPhone to shoot a roll of film! I shot a roll on an old Holga, complete with transmitter to trigger all the flash heads. And in the tradition of film, as I will have to wait a week or so for the results in the post, so will you!
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Watch this space.

I am already looking forward to the next shoot!

#curryclub inaugural photoshoot...

Saturday 9th July saw the first #CurryClub photoshoot in Gareth Davies Studios in Wokingham. We had a great days shooting with some great models and lots of laughs. The theme for the shoot was 'film'. I am still editing my shots, but will be posting my interpretation here soon. I am awaiting a roll of processed 120 film in the post - I haven't had to wait for transparencies to be returned in the post for years! It brings back memories!

Watch this space!