Aidan is a partner in McGonigle McGrath Architects, Belfast, but he's also a keen photographer and his insight and knowledge on the day proved to be £10 well spent, that's almost a month's subscription to Creative Cloud!
Enjoy, Nick.
Sometimes you run around with your head in the clouds thinking about what to photograph next, well I do anyway, or what technique or idea you can try out this month but then every so often something just kind of arrives on your doorstep, the twitter doorstep in this case. I don't follow too many organisations or companies because sometimes you end up with a feed full or rubbish and you can't see the wood for the trees and I personally enjoy the experience I get from twitter just now as it kind of works for me. Like everything in life you get out of it what you put into it and if it's meant to be, well it's meant to be. But enough philosophical ramblings for now. So, where was I....yes, an event appeared in my feed courtesy of DiscoverNI and it turned it to be a lot more interesting than I had originally anticipated and a thoroughly enjoyable day out even with our inclement(polite for shitty) weather The event itself was organised through PlaceNI and it was promoted as 'An Architectural wander with Aidan McGrath' so initially I wasn't sure if this was my cup of tea but I bit the bullet and signed up for the tour. Aidan is a partner in McGonigle McGrath Architects, Belfast, but he's also a keen photographer and his insight and knowledge on the day proved to be £10 well spent, that's almost a month's subscription to Creative Cloud! I've seen a number of the buildings we visited but I've never really stopped to take them in properly or understand the history and importance of them so in some respects it was a breathe of fresh air to have been privy to the knowledge that was shared on the day. To be honest it even provoked some further conversation with the in-laws later that evening and the television and Ipads even remained in standby mode the whole time. Take out of that what you will. Belfast has some wonderful buildings and is saturated with history when you open your eyes a bit more so thanks to photography in a roundabout way I've managed to learn something else. I decided to limit myself to the nifty fifty for the whole walk but I've got plans to get out again soon with a telephoto in tow and try to capture some more of the wonderful textures and abstracts that caught my attention too. If you live here or plan to visit then I'd definitely recommend that you take time to capture Belfast in all it's glory, past, present and future. Thanks to Aidan and the PlaceNI team for organizing such an enjoyable tour. As always here's the rest of the images I captured on the day.
Enjoy, Nick.
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I've been busy with a lot of stuff lately and have another blog post to get sorted out with some recent work and things I've been doing but in the meantime I'd like to share this link with anybody and everybody.
I don't know Danielle personally but have networked with her recently and if you haven't already seen her work you soon will. It's in a different league in my opinion and whilst it may not be everyone's cup of tea there is no doubting the serious talent. Best wishes Danielle and look forward to seeing more of your work. Check out this link - http://tumblr.danielletunstall.com/post/24344013811 I thought it was about time I had a brief look back at where I've gotten to with my photography to date and the various trials and tribulations I've encountered already in the short space of time since I picked up my first proper DSLR. I hope that I can also offer some further insight from a raw beginners point of view as to how big the playing field is out there in the world of photography and also broaden the network of photographers that I've already been keeping in touch with. With a bit of hard work, persistance and luck maybe some of this information might reach a wider audience and turn out be useful to someone else further down the line who finds themselves in a similar position. Obviously you don't want my life story because if I was that important I wouldn't be blogging in the first place and I'd already have my book deal done and dusted and be on my way to retirement. I also imagine you're probably not that interested in me personally (lets be honest) but are more likely out to glean as much information from the rest of the photography fraternity at large for as little cost as possible and with minimal effort but trust me the latter will never happen if you have paid attention to any of the notable experts in the field out there! If you've got this far then I must have grabbed your attention so keep reading! I started out with a Kodak compact camera and then upgraded to a Nikon D3000 about two years ago. You can check out some of my early work here - http://www.ablogandbeyond.blogspot.co.uk/ I appreciate that it's not great but hopefully I've been improving along the way and that's what it's all about. I've been doing a lot of reading and networking recently and discovered a great photographer called Matt Hart and as he pointed out in his recent blog post - http://lighttraveler.co.uk/blog/2012/4/starting-out nowadays you can achieve so much with your phone camera let alone a DSLR so if money is an object stick with a smart phone and get yourself some apps including instagram.....trust me it'll be thoroughly enjoyable and will give you a taste of all sorts of photography. If you're someone who doesn't like the thoughts of networking then you might be better stopping in your tracks right now because it appears to be a key piece of the jigsaw when starting out as a photographer and isn't something I had really given much consideration to when I jumped onboard the photography bus. I'm not saying give up on being a photographer but I would hazard a guess that you're more than likely going to share your work with someone at some point in time so you're going to do that online unless you've already got a magazine deal agreed. Marketing seems to be another area of interest but I haven't reached that bridge yet so I'll avoid that for now. I'm not a big facebook fan to be honest and my friends list is limited to people I genuinely know or that I've had some sort of social interaction with on more than one occasion, sounds like a good night out for some people doesn't it? What's that I hear you ask......how do you network then if you don't use Facebook much? Well personally I'd currently recommend Twitter along with Google+ which I am going to be focusing on again thanks to a chap called Colby Brown...look him up, he won't be hard to find. You've also got Pinterest and other options out there but these are the main ones for me. Coincidentally as I am drafting this post I see another contender now with a Beta sign up called BO.LT, it's never ending! Well, hopefully that's enough to get you started for now but keep an eye out for future posts and images from my site. |
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