Blog Posts

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Communion Studio Sessions

Following the success of last year’s Studio sessions in the Gallery on Communion Days, we’re offering the same packages again this year.

These sessions are designed to be a convienient way to drop in to the Gallery on the day of your child’s First Communion.  They last around 10 minutes and there is no session fee.

Ten minutes doesn’t sound like a lot but you’ll get a range of images of everyone you bring into the Gallery that day.  Of course we’ll get a range of solo portraits of your son or daughter on their day.  But there is also time to get pictures with their siblings, grandparent, godparents and don’t forget the parents of course.

There are only a number of 10 minute slots available on each Saturday in May so it’s best to enquire as early as possible if this is something that would suit you and your family.

The panel below gives a good idea of the range of images from a session last year.  I’ve also posted more information about the different kinds of sessions and the package prices but feel free to call in to get more info.

Gallery sessions will also be available for Confirmation sessions in most of the local schools.  Contact us for more.

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Lesley Stothers on Nationwide

Monday’s special Valentine’s edition of RTÉ’s Nationwide programme carried a piece on Lesley Stothers and her Love Spoons.

I’ve photographed Lesley’s amazing work a few times over the years and a number of my pics were used on the show to illustrate her story.

Well done Lesley, the whole thing came across really well – and my pics looked great on TV!

The show is available on the RTÉ player http://www.rte.ie/player/#!v=1135775 Lesley is 8:20 into the show.

I’m also helping Lesley put together a blog to show off more of her work and keep her growing band of fans up to date on where her work is available on show: lesleystothers.wordpress.com

Lesley Stothers' Love Spoons 'As Seen on TV'
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Back to it

Just back from Glorious West Cork.  There really is no place like it.  This kids spent 5 hours on the beach yesterday digging holes and playing Flags.

Walking Barleycove Beach with the LX-5

On a photographic note (this is my business blog afterall).  I left the usual kit behind and took almost everything else: I did a portrait session with the Mrs on the Hasselblad; I shot a roll of 35mm on the F4 with the 50f.12 and 16f3.5 fisheye; I filled a 4GB card on the Panasonic LX5 (including the above).  Lots of good stuff from all these – although I’ll need to wait for the films to be processed – how very 20th century!

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Sos Beag

We’re taking a couple of days out over the mid term so the Gallery will be closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week (13th to 15th Feb).

I will be available on the mobile for anything urgent but otherwise feel free to drop me an email and I’ll get back to you on Thursday.

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About Photography

I’m always interested in reading what other photographers have to say.  To be perfectly honest a lot of them don’t make a bag of sense but sometimes you find something that resonates with your own personal experience and expresses it in a way that you can’t.

“Photography is one percent talent and ninety-nine percent moving furniture”

Attributed to Arnold Newman by Annie Leibovitz.

There’s loads of these on Photography Quotations.  Generally I don’t have the time and patience to go through this site to look for stuff but it’s handy to check something (I can’t stand mis-quotes).  This one isn’t there though so we’ll have to trust Annie.

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Transitions: Your Child’s Confirmation

Vouchers are also available for confirmation gifts

Your child’s Confirmation day certainly isn’t as big a day as their First Communion but it is not less important as a milestone in their lives.

In fact in many respects it is more significant because it coincides with a major transition in their lives: the move to senior school.

Now my kids aren’t there yet – this is all ahead of them – but I’m assured that things change considerably once they move on from National School.  It’s not just that they are teenagers, their peer group is now exclusively other teenagers.  It’s a time of change and many challenges.

What I have seen is that kids in 6th class still behave like kids in front of the camera.  They don’t yet wear that protective shell of self-conciousness that many teenagers grow.  They are open, relaxed, comfortable in themselves and photographs taken for their confirmation have a unique blend of confidence and innocence.

So although your child’s confirmation is probably going to be a low-key event compared to their communion, that doesn’t mean that it should go unmarked.  You may not be planning a large family get-together, a bouncy castle and a big party, but think about getting photographs taken professionally.

There are a number of things you might consider:

  • Sessions are available at the Gallery on the day of the Confirmation.  There’s no charge for the session, it takes about 10 minutes and you’ll get a range of studio images with the rest of the family
  • If you’re going on to a Hotel or Restaurant after Mass then I can meet you there.
  • I can come to your home either before you leave or if you’re celebrating at home afterwards.
  • We can arrange a session on another date if that suits better.  This allows a more flexible and relaxed session with a wider range of images possible.

Generally there is more availability for confirmations because they are weekdays and schools don’t coincide but some dates are very busy for sessions.  So contact us now to discuss your child’s confirmation and let us capture it in a unique way.

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Cork History Project

Begging you for mercy!

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.

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More on smiles

I’ve just finished re-reading Annie Leibovitz’s ‘At Work’.  I’m a big fan and I went back to it looking for ‘January Inspiration’.  Unusually (for me) it’s a photography book with more words than pictures but it’s her perspective on her work that I find most enlightening.

So there’s a few things that I want to mull over and a few references to work that inspired her that I need to follow up.

But there’s one quote that was immediately relevant to my previous post:

“There are not many smiling people in my pictures.  I’ve never asked anyone to smile.  Almost never … You can almost hear the sigh of relief when you tell someone they don’t have to smile.

“…The smile is a component of family pictures.  Mothers don’t want to see their children looking unhappy.  My mother would hire a local photographer to make a family portrait and he would inevitably ask us all to smile.  Forced.  In the fifties, everything was supposed to be OK, although half the time it wasn’t OK.  It took me years to understand that I equated asking someone to smile with asking them to do something false.

“There are people who smile naturally.  It’s their temperament.  And you can catch a smile that is spontaneous, of the moment.  My daughter Sarah has the most beautiful smile.  When you see it occurring so naturally in children you hate to see it lost. I crumbled inside one day when I saw Sarah fake a smile.”

There’s a contrast in the observation that mother’s require smiling pictures of their kids to prove everything is OK and the love she shares with all of us of our own child’s natural smile.

So the objective of a family photographer is to capture those natural, spontaneous smiles and not the fake ones.  Often these smiles are reactive.  It’s a big part of what I do to try and produce those reactions and capture then, no matter how fleeting they are.  This isn’t easy but we always get something. The hardest part is to get a reaction from more than one child in a family group.

She smiles too
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A Child’s Perspective

My Sister's Rainbow Shiny Iggy

In some respects I deal in Happy Faces.

It is a simple truth that the pictures that sell are the happy, smiley-face pictures – and we go to great lengths at times to get them.  I think that’s fair enough: photographs are permanent memories.  We want to remember ourselves in our best, happiest times.  Photographs of those we love smiling make us happy.

Great photography invokes a strong emotional response from the viewer.

On that count this photograph definitely does it for me.  It fills me with a father’s Love and Compassion more than most of the images I’ve taken recently.  It does it to me every time I see it.

This is a picture of my eldest daughter on the day her sister got ‘the best packet of Moshi Monster cards ever’ and she got a pack of very ordinary ones.

And I can assure you at this point that hugs were administered, feelings were acknowledged, but the general perspective of things wasn’t lost.  It’s just a pack of collector cards.  There will be other packs.  She is your sister.  I know that doesn’t help much right now.  I know that you’re doing your best to do the right thing.  I know it still hurts.  I love you.

I think she doesn’t really like that I love this image.  I know she doesn’t want me to think of her like this because it isn’t representative of her overall persona.  It is a snapshot of an instant of sadness.  I was even reluctant to put it up here because, beautiful and evocative as it is, it’s not representative of the general character of her personality or my professional work.

In fact I only took it to try and distract her into helping me scout this room as a possible location for a very different portrait.  But since she also just made the ‘front page‘ with a more representative image then I think at the moment it’s OK.

Photography is capable of capturing the full gamut of human emotion.  We most frequently use it to capture the joy of family life and that is most definitely what I specialise in.  But there must be a place for remembering the rest of our everyday human experience.

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First Holy Communions in 2012

First Holy Communion Pictures

I have just added two new pages to the blog giving information about the Communion Sessions and Packages for this year.

First Holy Communion Photographs for 2012 contains details of the various types of services offered for Communion Days

First Holy Communion Packages 2012 contains details of the print packages available to both Communion and Confirmation sessions

There’s a fair bit of information in these pages but feel free to contact me if you need anything else: 021 429 3714 or rob@roblambphoto.com