Football and Eircom

"It never rains but it pours"

So a lot has happened in the last seven days.  Firstly I shot the John Upton Memorial Football Tournament up at Drumbo Park near Lisburn on Sunday the 9th to help out for work, then on Thursday I had what I guess was a changing moment in my photography.  Eircom were hosting an event with Ad2One at their Dublin office and I was asked to photograph the day.  I have to say that it was not down to me that I got this opportunity, so a massive thanks goes to my good friend Steve for setting everything up. 

I booked the day off work and it was an early start, leaving Belfast at 5am to be in Dublin at 7.  The day itself went off really smoothly and I got all the images I needed, however, the one point that was massively obvious was the lack of light I could capture with the 450D and also I could have done with something like a 24-70mm or even a 16-35mm lens because I was swapping about between the 50mm and the 70-200mm quite a lot during the day.  And here, I owe another massive amount of thanks to Sparky for once again lending me his 70-200mm for the day.  In light of these drawbacks, I really see myself going down the route of the 5D Mark 2 with the kit lens that comes with it.  Everyone says that start investing in new lenses first, but I'm going to go my own way with this one and chance my arm.

Anyway, on the drive down to Dublin when we crossed the border, Steve said something that made me smile.  He said something along the lines of, 'you know you have to change your Facebook page now?'.  When I asked him why he said quite matter-of-factly, 'well, you're getting paid for what you're doing today so you're not an amateur photographer any more, you're a professional.  And this is in Dublin...so you're a professional international photographer'.  It's funny how little thing like that make a difference, but it put a smile on my face for quite some time, actually even thinking about it now it hasn't faded any!

So the pictures from the event have been sent off to Ad2One and I have uploaded the pictures from Drumbo Park to my Facebook page which means this is going to be a wordy blog with no images.  I'm sure it'll be just fine like that.

Next steps are to get my friends Ryan and Emma out to get take some pictures for their 'mock' engagement shoot and hopefully there will be more to be done with Eircom and Ad2One in the future.

Much love,

Josh

The First Wedding

Once again, it's been too long between posts, but I've been shooting in the meantime so I feel that I can somehow justify the absence.

Anyway, this post is to upload some of the images from Mel & Andys wedding that I was second shooter at back in June.  The reason I didn't upload any before now is that I was waiting to make sure they had their album before I 'leaked' any on the net!

So it was a great wedding in the Clarion Hotel in Carrickfergus with quite a big turnout.  Being second shooter, I was looking for more of the candid images rather than getting people to stand in front of the camera as you normally recognise from wedding photos.

Mostly I've been trying to come up with a look that's quite unique but not too over produced.  I've been playing with the split toning on most of the images and I know a few of them are quite worked on, but hopefully I'm getting closer to something that I like the look of.