takeaframe

a news photographer's non news diary

Archive for December 2009

Loads of Travelling

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Once again it’s copious amounts of car time. The last three weeks have been just one constant road trip after another with a couple of days at home. The kids are beginning to notice my absence. I picked up a hamstring injury preparing for a marathon in November and thanks to all the car time it’s not really improving, it just seems to rotate around and around the upper leg and hip. Bummer.

I’ll just have to parcel up some sympathy and leave it under the christmas tree for Christmas day. Mmm, some sympathy, with a few glasses of Connemara Peated Single Malt, some good food and the kids creating havoc. All this before 7am. Never mind the hamstring, bring on the nut loaf…

Written by dwyersean

December 18, 2009 at 11:29 am

National Dialogue

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That’s the funny thing about the Irish, they just can’t stop informing ‘the’ debate, any debate. Even the use of command english in everyday life is an excuse for subversion, humour, and illumination. Take the image below. I nearly put the car in the ditch with laughter when I passed this one. how many times have I muttered ‘dickhead’ under my breath as I was cut up on the road. How many times has it been muttered at me. I’d like to raise a glass of tapwater to the person who tagged this sign. Group hug now, for all the bad drivers in Ireland, yes, we are that bad…

Written by dwyersean

December 11, 2009 at 12:44 pm

Budget 2009

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You know when you feed the budgie it goes tweet tweet all day. It might annoy you. You might want to kill it. No more budgie, no more tweet, tweet, squawk.

It’s the same thing for the average punter. All the crazies have to do is press a button and we all go away with severe unction. That’s unless you really get mad and want to do something about the injustice of your position. But clear communication, untruth or not, will placate the average punter; putting him back into his stall where, of course, there will be plenty of fresh hay and water. Of course…

The Irish government, have pulled a rabbit out of the hat. It’s a very tough budget, but they’ve held our hands for the last year so we could get our heads around it. So, no riots yet, but it’s going to be a close run thing. Wages are going backwards in the public sector, mortgages aren’t, if that one issue isn’t addressed then, as a country we are looking at significant difficulty.

Mortgages now are based on a wage levesl that don’t exist, and house/land valuations that aren’t credible, this should mean some attempt at mass renegotiation in the mortgages of thousands of households, who bought in the last four or five years. The Republic owns one bank, will probably own another one sometime next year and then there’s there’s €55 billion tied up in NAMA. Mortgages are where unions should be targeting their fiscal tactics in the next year. Hopefully.

So the gov reduced the price of booze! Who said these guys couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery… I wonder, was the drinks cabinet raided on the Titanic before it went under?

Written by dwyersean

December 11, 2009 at 12:31 pm

Posted in ireland, recession

Perplexed by the complex

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The instant visual feed back provided by digital photography meant ever more options; options to be considered and developed. The mind may operate at lightning speeds, but the physical world we inhabit, has a different pace. This was, in part, a large element for me in the tension digital photography brought to my work place. For others it was a liberation.

I looked at how light was rendered in my camera as a fairly elastic thing. The arrival of digital photography introduced a more brittle or fragile creative process into my photography for some time.

I love this photographers take on the digital and film tension. I loathe to say film versus digital, as far as I’m concerned there is no versus. They are two different mediums.

Talking about work arounds, I’ve started to shoot personal stuff with film now, and it’s a re-education, but it’s fun.

Written by dwyersean

December 9, 2009 at 6:50 pm

Posted in Photography

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