Clearly I’m not a believer in the old motto ‘never work with kids’.
Why would you not work with them when there’s so much fun to be had.
The thing about photographing kids of any age is to realise that they generally won’t do what you want – they’ll do what they want. Which is only a problem if you want them to ‘sit still and smile’.
But if you want them to go out and be themselves, doing what they want is all you can wish for.
You just have to be able to capture it in all a photograph!
It’s over. It’s offcially been handed in. Good luck to whoever is marking them.
The History Project has become a major part of our lives over the last few weeks: any spare time we thought we had has gone to it; the combined resources of four families have been devoted to it.
In fairness they all did really well. They learned a small slice of local history and they learned a lot about organising themselves as a team.
Our lot decided to do a video instead a model and true-to-form what might have been a documentary became a drama production. A big thanks to Hugh for doing a great job with the video but it fell to me to produce a cover shot.
So inspired by my recent reading I went for something slightly more ‘conceptual’ than my normal stuff. I even dragged out the studio backdrop and the strobes for it! The girls were very expressive (and patient) models and we had a bit of fun with the courtroom drama idea – whilst keeping the original home-grown costumes. We even shot a circular concept shot for the DVD label!
I’m quite pleased with it. It’s good to have to think of something different for a specific purpose. And while I much prefer location work for most of what I do, there are times when you need something more abstract.
We made a good start to 2012 by finally managing to make it to a Bishopstown Orienteering Club day out in Currabinny. It’s something Mrs Lamb has been wanting to do for ages and thanks to friends we made it on 1/1/12.
Great to be out in the woods after a restful Christmas and finding the markers on the easy course was great fun with the kids (and got them round the forest way easier).
It was unusal to see the woods so bare. I normally do a few sessions in these woods over the course of the year and this tree in particular is a favourite to get kids climbing and used to me and the camera. It’s normally ‘bright shade’ with a strong green colour cast from the reflected light from the forest but there was no problem with that on Sunday!
There’s still a few days left to go see the lights and decorations in the Peace Park (aka Bishop Lucey Park). We went on the first weekend it was open ang there was no queuing.
The kids had a great time running around looking at everything and even throwing an ice cube in the fountain to make a wish.
The Small Fella even said yesterday that he forgot to put ‘something’ on his Santa list but he thinks he’s OK because he wished for it in the fountain. Good luck to Santa with that one!!
The park has a new designer this year and it’s looking fresher. But it struck me that it’s less interactive – certainly compared to the first ‘Franc year’. It really is a photo event: there are lots of festive things to get your picture taken with (see above!).
So bring your cameras and it’s time to try out the slow-sync flash. It may be disguised as ‘night mode’ or something like that. But basically it should slow the shutter down to bring up the ambient lights then blast the foreground with a flash to pick kids out. It takes a bit of playing with and a steady hand but the pic of the kids above was taken on my compact Pansonic Lumix LX-5. You don’t need anything too ‘flashy’.
I’m pleased to annouce the launch of Pepperstack Bistro’s new-look web-site:
http://www.pepperstackbistro.com/
I know Imelda has put a lot of work into the site since we did the photoshoot earlier in the Summer.
The food looks good but I have to say that it tastes even better and you can be assured of warm, friendly service.
Best of Luck with it guys and we’ll be back down there as soon as we can!
Credit also to Green Amber Web Solutions for putting the site together
We’re just back from setting up a stand at the Bank. Earlier this year AIB invited us to put up a promotional stand at 66, South Mall.
We spent most of last week running around organising a few things and we’re pleased to say that it went up this morning.
On the table is a special promotional voucher for a free 8×12 print with every session booked between now and Christmas. There are more details on the promotions page.
I’d like the chance to thank Print XPress on Tramore Road and DMOS for pulling out the stops to get things to me in time for the stand to go up this week. I really meant to allow two weeks to get this thing organised between the jigs and the reels it all happened last week!
So if you’re in town, why not pop in and take a look!
We returned to Allihies for the Festival again this year. Although it wasn’t as big as last year’s centenary celebrations (no pig racing this year) there was still plenty going on.
With the kids a bit older we broke the family record on how far we got up the hill behind the Copper Mines and with Nana’s help we even got out for a late pint in the O’Brien’s this year!
Regular readers will know I like to ‘go analogue’ on my hols and so it’s taken longer than I’d like to get the pics up!
This year’s Ballinlough Youth Clubs Summer Festival is on this coming Saturday, 27th August at the Ballinlough Community Centre. The event starts at 3:30 and will run until around 10pm.
As usual lots of fun for all the family laid on by our local Community Groups.
Rob Lamb Photography is pleased to support the event this year and we’ll probably see you there at some stage!
Although I’m not planning on getting ‘roped’ into the tug-of-war this year – the opposition is too scarey!
OK, foriegn hols are over but we’re busy enjoying our hometown – especially with visitors in town. So this week we went to Shandon to ring the bells. I did it when I first came to Cork (20 years ago) and apart from certain health and safety requirements (we’ve loads of pics of the kids wearing red ear muffs) the experience is as good as ever.
As is the view!
Life is pretty hard for Lego Men in our house and things have got worse since the steady arrival of Pirates at Christmas and a recent Birthday.
Today however, while the girls were at Mass, a Man-Eating Shark turned up.
Thankfully there are still a few Heroes out there:
For anyone interested, the Shark is mostly made of blue bricks that have been part of the Lego box since before I started playing with it. I assume my sisters once had a house with a blue roof?
These pics are also part of the on-going trial of the Nikon 50mm f1.2 AIS (and my ability to focus it manually!). More on the search for the ‘perfect 50’ to come.
