Still Life » Ronan Palliser Photography

Foot in mouth

Oct 182011

I’m just back from tonight’s Dublin Camera Club meeting, and two things prompted me to write a blog post. The first was my parting exchange with Paul as I left, as he shouted along the corridor that he was “looking forward to more blog posts” in a sort of a “have you stopped blogging or what?” kind of way. Point taken, Paul. The second was something funny that happened at the club. Well, funny in a “foot in mouth” kind of way. It all started when I sat next to a fellow member of the club – let’s call him John. Actually, that’s his name. Anyway, there we were listening to the judge commenting on images….

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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

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Mar 152011

I photographed the most adorable little girl on Saturday afternoon – she’s 18 months old, which presented some challenges in terms of keeping her one the “set”, as her parents wanted high-key shots against white seamless paper. But with the help of some props, including those above, I managed to hold her interest and came away with a lovely set of images. My approach to this type of photoshoot, in terms of the lighting at least, can be summed up in a three word phrase usually associated waste disposal – that is: “reduce, reuse, recycle”. Let me elaborate…

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Hot chocolate with style

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Feb 282011

Aoife and I had two reasons to celebrate this weekend – today is both the start of her maternity leave and my 33rd birthday – and so we treated ourselves to a night at one of Dublin’s nicer hotels – the Merrion – with a little help from a voucher we had received from Christmas. Staying in a hotel in your home town is something few people do – it is an extravagance – but I can highly recommend it. Especially when the hotel serves its hot chocolate in a silver pot, complete with some very yummy petits fours.

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Flowers Made Easy

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Feb 082011

Saturday’s photowalk was, first and foremost, all about the flowers – or at least it was supposed to be, until I got distracted by the teddy bears. But when I did manage to drag myself away from the soft toys, I did take a few flower photographs too. The benefit of the lighting set-up I had created was that I could pretty much drop different subjects in front of my camera, take the shot and move on, so the turn around time for each shot was quick. All I really had to worry about was composition, and which flowers I photographed. I think others did better with the flower shots than I did (Nuria comes to mind), but my little improvised studio served me well. Some examples of my shots (and a break from the text) below.

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Teddy Bears Made Easy

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Feb 072011

On Saturday morning I gave up one of my few remaining lie-ins (for the next 18 years at least) to participate in my first official photowalk. Organized by Stephen over at Photowalk.ie, this was an outing to a local (to me) online flower delivery business, Flowers Made Easy. The idea was simple and yet refreshingly different. 25 photographers were given total access to all aspects of the warehouse for about 3 hours, and let loose to photograph (or not photograph) whatever they wished. With a warehouse full of fresh flowers, and even some studio photography equipment available for use, there was always going to be only one outcome from the day – a bunch (pardon the pun!) of happy photographers armed with an impressive selection of flower photographs. Or in my case, photographs of teddy bears.

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