Texture…

I’ve been playing about with adding textures to some of my photographs lately, it’s actaully quite tricky to do well. I’m pretty please with how this one turned out, but I need a little more practice at it.

Terrifying…

I was tidying my room this moring, and came across a DVD… A DVD of one of the scariest things I have ever done. 50 metres, (160 feet), doesn’t sound that high, that it until you are about to leap off it.  For your amusement, here is the video of my doing my first Bungy jump, last year at AJ Hackett in Queensland, Australia.

It was recorded by the guys at AJ Hacket, not myself obviously…

[RSS Readers, there is a video embedded...]

Social networking, blessing or curse?

Social networking has really taken off in recent years, and completely rocketed in the past few months. Twitter is just one example, really becoming extremely popular with celebrity users, and endorsements from people like President Obama, and Stephen Fry.

I have been chatting to a few people recently about this rather interesting            subject recently.

I was chatting to Rick about whether twitter or second life for example actually enhance relationships, or are we unintentionally growing apart because of our love affair with technology. Are computer screens replacing faces, is the keyboard replacing our vocal chords?

I read this article the other day, about how social networking is harming our health.

People’s health could be harmed by social networking sites because they reduce levels of face-to-face contact, an expert claims.

Dr Aric Sigman says websites such as Facebook set out to enrich social lives, but end up keeping people apart.

Even as I sit and type this I guess I can’t help but feel a little hypocritical. For you guys reading my blog, how many of you actually know me? For all you know this blog could just be a front, and I could be pretending to be someone that I’m not, and you wouldn’t know the difference. Having said that, most of my blog readers are genuine friends that I do interact with in real life.

I was thinking about this last week as I went out to the Belfast Twestival, I got seriously slagged off for heading to it. It essentially was a charity fundraiser event, organised via twitter, where twitter users in each city met up. Now while I will agree that on some level it is a fairly geeky gathering, I think it isn’t as bad as many people would initially think. Here’s what I mean, what is worse, having quite a few friends online, or ‘followers’ in twitter terms, living within a few miles of you, and never meeting them? Or having these friends and people online, but actually meeting them in real life, going to gigs, etc…

For me, personally, I enjoy using social networking to keep in touch with friends that have moved away from home, and people that I don’t get to catch up with very often. As well as that I use twitter, and blogs etc to connect with, and get to know other people across the world, I can chat with other photographers, and stuff, who without social networking I wouldn’t have heard of.

I would love to know what your thoughts are on this? Is social networking enriching or damaging relationships with others? kind of an ironic discussion to take place on a blog…

Northern Ireland is beautiful…

There are some really beautiful places in Northern Ireland, there are the obvious places like Giants Causeway and the Mournes, but there are some really hidden gems as well.

Mussenden Temple, Downhill

River Bann

Flickr

Like I said…

This is fast becoming a photo-blog. It’s been 120 years since the first photographic film (as we know it today) was produced. Many of you who read my blog may find this a little odd, but there is still an excitement that comes with picking up your developed film. Something a little unexpected,a hint of anticipation at the photographs that your eyes are about to see. I think this is one of the reasons I love film, and also experimental photography, the slight uncertainty about it. I picked up some photos today, and put the best of them up on my flickr, but here are a couple of my very favourites from the two films.

and it snowed some more…

But this time I attempted to go to Slemish, which was fine until I got to the car park and realised that was a bad idea, resulting in some very tricky maneuvers. It was however good fun, and a even got a few nice photos.

This blog is rapidly becoming a photoblog…

So apparently it snowed…

Giants Ring – Belfast

There are 6 more photos on my Flickr

Svenska Bilder…

As always there are some more on my Flickr,

Sweden…

Home of Ikea, Volvo and ABBA… I’m just back from a few days spent in Stockholm with a couple of friends. I also made a couple of new friends.We just spent the time relaxing, walking around the city, seeing some of the sights. It’s a really nice city, and wasn’t overly cold, especially considering the time of year. The downside to Sweden is it is pretty expensive. Some of the highlights were

• Walking around Gamla Stan, the old city
• Going to some really random and pretty cool coffee shops
• Vasa Musset – a museum with a real 16th Century galleon that was raised from the Seabed
• Visiting the worlds largest IKEA
• Eating real Swedish meatballs, yummy

Here are a couple of photos from the trip

I will upload some more photos in the coming days

Hilarious…

Saw this at the weekend, and a few times since, its very funny