Some images from a recent wedding in Carraigaline in Co Cork. Congratulations to Lorcan & Michelle. Rain is not always a bad thing for documentary wedding photography. It often adds an unexpected dimension to the story telling process.

While travelling between meetings in East Cork yesterday I managed to shoot a pack of Polaroid Type 100 Blue Film (Paul Giambarba Edition) into my Polaroid 600SE. This film produces gentle monochromatic blue tones ranging from lilac to deep blue. My plan was to keep the landscape work minimal, this location worked great because it was pretty stark with plenty of lines in ground from the cut crops and farm machinery indentations. It was tough to compose with the viewfinder system, hopefully the acquisition of a Mamiya Press focusing screen will help take a lot of guess work out. Needless to say, the scans do little justice to the end product but it gives a good impression of the film’s capabilities. The polaroids were backward peeled to leave a paper border on the image.  All images were shot handheld - 1/60sec @ f16. Thanks to John Dunne for allowing me to access the land.

Ballycotton in East Cork is a hidden gem and I encourage anyone to visit there . Edell & Jonathan tied the knot there last summer. They spent a long time scouting locations and it is easy to see why they chose Star of the Sea Church with spectacular views of Ballycotton Bay and on to the aptly titled Bayview Hotel - about a three minute walk apart. Here are some of my favourites.

Images from 2005, the legendary bassist from New Order & Joy Division : Peter Hook played a DJ set in Electric Avenue, Waterford. Eccentricity personified.

The results came through this morning, this was my first submission to an ISPWP quarterly contest. I did ok for an international competition considering the standard is high as are the amount of submissions. Here were my placings:

Bridal Party Portrait, 4th Place.

Pure Art, 8th place.

Venue/Location, 10th place:

Bride Portrait, 18th place:

extract from an email from Erick Danzer, Executive Director of http://www.bestofweddingphotography.com/

“We just finished up the review process a week or so ago, and we’re just in the process of sending out invitations for the second round right now. I’m happy to tell you that our board voted to extend you an invitation! You talk about a blend of documentary and artistic approaches on your site, and that’s definitely what we see there. All of your work has a distinctively artistic and edgy style that we would love to showcase. We’d be honored to count you as one of our first members from Ireland.

Your invitation comes after a rigorous review process by our Board, including David Beckstead, Ben Chrisman, Del Sol Photography (Matt Adcock and Sol Tamargo), Glen Johnson, Anna Kuperberg, Crash Taylor, and David Ziser. As I mentioned, our board members personally reviewed your work and voted to offer you this invitation.

In order to maintain our association’s standards, we plan limit our membership to a total of 500 top wedding photographers from around the world. You will become part of a new, dynamic group that has the potential to dramatically change the face of the wedding photography industry”

a very nice way to start the week!

The saddest aspect of the decline of this building is the potential it has to great. Frustrating planning systems, vandalism and now a lack of finance keeps the question mark hovering. I photographed the building early this year after I was given permission to access. It was a surreal experience. I knew the images had the potential to spark intense local debate which I did not want to be the centre of. Unsurprisingly, the profile of the building has been called into question with the Tall Ships Festival looming; this seems like the right time to release them to local press. Here is a closer look at some of those images…

I’ve been chasing a good image of the completed N25 Bridge for quite a while now. People often call looking for an image and recently a good client requested one so I thought it was time to get the finger out. The best location to shoot the bridge (in my opinion) is on a stretch of bank facing west which is on private land so not only did I need to get permission to access the land, I also had to allow myself time to get in position. The recent volcanic ash cloud threw up a good chance for a spectacular sunset to use as a backdrop and with patience, I wasn’t disappointed. This image was captured just after sunset last Friday evening. The heron or herons in the frame were not a flock! Rather one bird that flew into the shot so I fired off a few frames as he passed through. I created a very simple composite to track his progress at the various stages throughout - I think it works quite well. Right, that’s another long term image to mark off the “to shoot” list. With thanks to Mitch for the assistance and Dan for the patience!

Shot on Tramore beach this morning. With thanks to model Emma Sinnott, Kate Rose Crean (make-up) & Michael & Lyndsey from Foxy Chopper. Can’t decide if I prefer the b&w or colour close-up so I included both!

Too hard to pin a name on this one, basically it was a colaboration of collective creative talents in and around Waterford (Foxy Chopper, Muse, Kate Rose Crean, Yvonne Crotty, Keith Fitzgerald). More details and images to follow but here are a few images first ..