Detail » Ronan Palliser Photography

Tis the season to be… ordering albums

Dec 072011

Much of my photography-related activity over the last two months has focused not so much on taking photographs as on designing, and in some cases assembling, wedding albums. It’s a pre-Christmas trend that sees newly-weds finally sit down and select the 70 or show shots that make up their album in time to show it off at the traditional gatherings of family and friends that occur over the coming weeks. Coupled with the joys of a tax return, it has meant that my October and November hasn’t been a quiet one, but has been a productive one. Before distributing the latest batch of albums I took time to take a few photographs of them, mainly because, to date, I’ve only photographed one style of album, but I usually offer couples a choice of three styles.

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Found in the drafts folder…

Detail, Landscape, Ramblings 1 Response »

Sep 202011

I just happened to take a look in the “Drafts” folder of posts for the blog last night and found a few images stashed away in there that I obviously had intended to post, but had, for whatever reason, abandoned. None of the posts had any text – just images, so I’m not really sure what it was I was intending on writing about them. So that they don’t spend all their days sitting in that lonely drafts folder, however, I thought I might as well give them their moment in the limelight. And in doing so, perhaps try to remember in a few words what the circumstances of each shot were. First up this flower above, which was part of a bunch I bought for Aoife for Valentine’s Day earlier this year.

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Lunchtime culture

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Aug 162011

A while back I blogged about a headshot I took of my brother Conor – one he needed for a high-profile gig coming up in the summer. Well that gig is today, as Conor takes charge as guest conductor of the RTE Concert Orchestra for a lunchtime concert at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. It’s a pretty big deal for Conor – at 24 years of age to get to conduct a professional orchestra with the reputation of the RTE Concert Orchestra in a venue like the National Concert Hall is bound to be. So I’ll be there to watch, as will all my family and, I’m sure, many of Conor’s friends. A highlight for me is, I expect, going to be the final piece in the concert, as the orchestra plays Riverdance. Conor has been staying with us for the last couple of nights, and had the score for Riverdance with him, so I took the opportunity to look at it (and take a couple of snaps) last night.

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Flash-lit Friday: Photographing a black box

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Aug 052011

I received a question from a reader a long time ago (thanks for your patience Brendan) that I promised I’d answer on the blog. The question and answer will follow in my next post, but before I could write an answer I needed an image to illustrate the post. The image I needed required me to figure out a way to photograph what is, essentially, a black box. And to photograph it I had to light it. What follows is a brief walk-through of how I lit it, but let me say up front that I’m not promising that my approach, as detailed below, is the most technically correct approach. All I can say is that it gave me a usable image in a short space of time, which, given I was doing this at 11pm at night, meant I still got to bed at a reasonable hour. In the 15 minutes or so that I spent setting up and refining the shot I learnt a couple of things – the first being that my black box wasn’t just any old black box.

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An ethical dilemma

Detail, Ramblings 2 Responses »

Aug 022011

In my previous post I talked about the gear I brought with me on the first outing of a project I’ve recently undertaken, and hinted at the fact that in a photographic sense, that first outing wasn’t necessarily a complete success. In fact, being honest, as I drove home from that outing my immediate reaction was that it had been a photographic failure, but like many things, with a bit of time to reflect I realised this wasn’t entirely true. I did come away with only 8 usable photos, which, given I had spent a half day on the task, was disappointing. But as a learning experience both for this particular project and others, the half a day was well spent. Plus I learnt a few things about nutrition too. But before that, there was a tricky ethical dilemma to resolve. How do you photograph people who don’t want to be photographed? In fact, perhaps the first question is this: do you photograph them at all?

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