The Mortello Tower, just outside Dungloe.

The last two posts featured a local model and where shot in the Townhouse Gallery in Belfast.

George, the owner, and Jane, the model, were brilliant – hosting a bunch of us for the evening and making sure our local lighting expert didn’t go too off page (thanks as always to Gordon for the lighting tips).

It’s the first time I’ve taken photographs like this outside either the club or a family home and it was a great experience. Having experts on hand to advise on lighting and having a model who not only understood direction but was able to translate my “uhms” and “erms” for “look this way” and “smile” or “pout” made everything make sense.

As a (very) amateur photographer, I’d been nervous of going to galleries or talking to folks outside my comfort zone. Looking back, I’m not so sure why. If you’re into photography, can I suggest you make a trip to your local gallery and have a chat – you might find someone like George who is putting evening just like this on for local photographers and it’s a great opportunity to try something fun.

Out of the evening, I think I got maybe 10 photographs I like to some degree or another.

Here’s a sample.

I posted on Twitter last night when I published the original photo of Jane. It’s not something I do a lot – I should really use this whole social media thing more…

Anyway, a comment from a friend about the crop of the image made me look again. I think he may have had a point….

It’s just a shame that her dress bled into the background in the shot. It’s a little to indistinct an edge for my liking.

No. Not the MTV awards.

Last night I was lucky enough to be invited to an acoustic session organised by a friend from work. What’s better, he let me bring my camera along and take photos of the artists playing.

My little camera isn’t up to the low light of an event like this, but I was quite happy with the shots. I was also really happy to be privileged to attend The Lagan Sessions.

If you’re in Belfast next Sunday, take a look at The Pavilion. You could do a lot worse for an evening of real music.

I’ve posted up a few shots of Logie already, so I thought I’d share the rest of my picks from the night. I’ve enjoyed the versatility offered by these images – it’s good to have a set of shots of the same person and have enough interest about their character to let you play with different styles and moods.

I doubt many of these will ever do well in competition or exhibition, but that was never the aim.

As well as the more moody shots of the juggler from Tuesday, I snatched this

the lighting wasn’t great as it was a grab while others were shooting the moody stuff. But I liked the pose and the look so I wanted to see if I could make it seem more “classic”.

A few curves and a black and white layer later and I got this:

All I had set out to do was to make it feel like a classic desaturated photograph. I’d left it at that and probably wouldn’t have shared it, except I got to looking at textured images and thought it’d be fun to try.

So, I took the image and applied a heavy antique paper scan over the top of it. Changed the blend mode to overlay and pulled down the opacity. I really like the result:

A little curves were added to vignette the picture.

All in all, I liked the result.

You can read all about texturing here if it’s something you want to try.

First of a series of pictures of Logie, a local juggler in Belfast who was kind enough to sit for us last night.  Lighting set up by Gordon – it pays to have a professional in your camera club…

September introduces a new season of photography clubs for me. It’s a good thing too as I’d fallen away from my camera over the past few months, not by choice but by circumstance.

Interestingly this year, the program for my local club (CPA) has a lot more focus on taking and working with photographs. I’d been hopeful this would invigorate me and teach me some new tricks and even after week 2 I can see I’m going to be pretty happy this year.

Last night we set up a series of still life objects using different light types. The idea being to show that you could do a lot with simple lighting and you don’t need expensive  equipment. This picture was taken using a 40watt desk lamp and a gold reflector.

This final image was converted to monochrome, but the original was good and a little compensation for the colour balance of the bulb made for a great result too.

What was especially interesting for me was the introduction to the subject delivered by one of the club members. Brian has won a lot of awards including achieving some great accreditation with the Royal Photographic Society for his still life work and some of the tips and suggestions he gave made for an excellent learning experience.

“If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise..”

OK, so no bears, but you would have seen members of CPA out with the Northern Ireland Fungus Group hunting for mushrooms. It was great to be welcomed along to one of the Funguys outings and to get a chance to be shown some of the cool things that start to appear in forests and woods around the country this time of year.

I know I harp on about camera clubs, but if it wasn’t for my membership of one, I’d never get opportunities to take some of the photographs I do, to play with kit I can only dream of owning and to learn things that no sane man would ever set out to teach me.

It’ll be interesting to see what the fungus experts make of the camera club pictures – I suspect they may despair of our artistic license…

(100mm (macro), f32, 1.3secons with a flash fired from low camera left to create shadow)