31
July
2009

Summer 09


Another wonderful summer. Maybe it's just me but I can remember lots of sunny days in June and July when I was a kid - maybe I'm just remembering the best bits. Last year was dreadful, 60+ days of rain in a row and the year before wasn't much better. Lately it seems like we only get one or two months a year here when the weather gets any way summery. Hopefully it picks up in August, but I won't hold my breath. Definitely have to get away to somewhere with a healthy promise of blue skies next year.

Gillian took Jack and Oscar to Howth last week. They ended up walking the pier, then sitting and watching people pass by. Gillian noticed them watching other kids and struck up a conversation about what sort of girlfriends they'd like.

Gillian: Oscar, what sort of girlfriend would you like when you grow up?
Oscar: Someone who's kind and funny and is very nice.
Gillian: Jack, what sort of girlfriend would you like when you grow up?
Jack: One that has pink hair and says 'ooh la la'.

I've no idea where he gets it from, but he cracks me up. We were sitting at the computer the other day, playing with iTunes putting together a playlist for himself. Black Dog by Led Zeppelin came on and he went mental, dancing and bopping around the room.

Me: Why'd you like that song, Jack?
Jack: It makes my bottom dance.

What can you say.


07
July
2009

Doubt Sets In

A good time not to look at the work of photographers you admire is just after you've finished working on a project. In the last few days I've finished processing the Coastland series and looked at books by William Albert Allard and Joel Sternfeld. I feel like throwing my camera out the window.

What I have realised though is that I need to be more ruthless in editing down the images I have. I had an initial longlist of 450 images, basically anything taken over the last two years of Coastland shots that I thought might have some potential. I managed to trim this to 189 before I started processing, and as I was processing I trimmed it further - but not by much. I'm going to spend the next few days not looking at what I've got, just thinking about each place, the images I have and which ones say most about those locations.

I'm also in two minds about the processing I've done, and whether I should reprocess all the images. If I do reprocess it'll be at least the third time I've worked on each of these images, which is both one of the advantages and one of the disadvantages of shooting digital. The advantage is individual images can be processed to give completely different experiences; colour, contrast, mood and atmosphere can be adjusted endlessly. The problem with that is it can feel like you're in a sweet shop trying to decide which one piece of candy is best. There's the added issue that one method of processing might only suit just one particular image, so you could end up with a sequence of images that hop all over the place visually, have no cohesion other than subject matter.

I think it's also been a bit of a jolt going from having something to shoot for an extended period of time to now having to produce a finished product. It's a very different mindset, a lot of decisions have to be made that could affect everything I've worked towards. I'm terrified I'll fuck it up - not that it really matters other than the sense of disappointment I'll feel. Christ, hobbies aren't supposed to be like this!

The good thing is that I have a deadline to work to. Decisions will have to be made one way or the other in the coming days.