Cork Analogue Photographers

We have moved!

2009-04-21T08:53:00.004+01:00

Click here to go to our new site at wordpress

Hmm, been a bit quiet around here lately. What's going on? Actually, we have been very busy preparing for the upcoming exhibitions. It really is crunch time now as the eight of us are trying to print somewhere between 50 and 60 photos for our upcoming exhibitions in gallery Nautique in Cork and the Lismore Studio and Gallery in Waterford. Believe me this has taken more organisation, meetings, finance and stress than we ever expected. But that's why we're here and it's a learning process. It will all come together on the day!

In the meantime we have also moved the site from google blogger to wordpress. The reason for moving to wordpress is the greater flexibility it allows - ie we can add pages, such as the current “About” and “Liked Links” pages, and we will also be adding gallery pages in the future. Soon enough. Sometime.

So here's the new link - http://corkap.wordpress.com/ - add this to your bookmarks / favourites / little bit of brain that remembers webpages. Or just keep coming back here and then click this

- Rory

Seamus Heaney at 70

2009-04-13T10:05:00.001+01:00

Follower

My father worked with a horse plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow around the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

Seamus Heaney

affection in the echo

2009-04-01T00:30:00.003+01:00

Hooray!! Click to enlarge

- Rory

home made lighting equipment

2009-03-28T10:57:00.005Z

I have been trying to teach myself studio lighting for the past while, via a few good sites on the net. The best I have found are strobist and lime. These guys are all using digital cameras these days, but light is light: learning how to light a subject and use light to sculpt your photographs has nothing to do with digital, film, or the camera.

The main source of light in our universe is, of course, the sun. Whether it's harsh noonday sun, or more likely here in Ireland, the giant softbox of cloud cover, the sun is our main light source. You may think that this is obvious, and that it has nothing to do with studio lighting, but the sun is simply a source of ambient light. When shooting indoors in the evening, electrical lighting is the ambient light. We all regularly use ambient light as our only light source - a lot of people express a preference for this. But we are also all aware, whether subconciously or not, of the affects of this ambient light source.

Students of photography are taught to be aware of the light source. To get your exposure right, what do you need to do? Expose for the shadows. Expose for the highlights. Use the correct film speed. Be aware of how the light is falling on your subject. Try to use the ambient light to add something to your subject. So after a while students will be getting their exposures right, and will start doing mad things, like getting up before dawn to catch that sunrise and the way it sculpts the landscape. Or pushing film to capture night scenes.

At some point we start to think more about light. How can we change the light source? Change the direction of the light? Add to the ambient light? In other words, studio lighting. If you like to photograph people, studio lighting can open a whole new world. It puts the photographer in control. Visualise a scene and light it the way your mind sees it. And of course, you don't need a studio. The point is that you are learning to control the light - remove some of the ambient, add some flash, think about it, be creative.

So, to get to the point of this post (been a long build up!), since the dawn of photography and cinema, there has been a whole industry building up an array of stuff that you can buy. Reflectors, umbrellas, softboxes, barn doors, snoots, grids, backgrounds, foregrounds, lights, strobes, the list goes on and on. You could spend a fortune and still not make a good photograph (always a problem with photography, actually). Luckily there's plenty of people in the world who don't want to or can't afford all this gear, and recognise that studio lighting is the home of cardboard, gaffer tape, gels, tinfoil and black plastic drinking straws - yep, DIY! You may not be able to build yourself a Hasslebald (even if you do get pretty good results with a shoebox and a pinhole), but you can build an array of studio equipment - hooray!

To get things going, a guy called Jag showed us on his blog page how to build a reflector. See his full instructions here. He went from this

To this

To this

Pretty good! Time to get busy!

Coming soon - Jason's funky foam bounce flash (seen in action at Padraigs opening night)!

- Rory

affection

2009-03-25T22:29:00.003Z

This evening Padraig's solo exhibition, "affection", opened in the exhibition room in Bishopstown public library. The room was full and there were plenty of red dots against the prints, which was great to see. The prints are beautiful and the exhibition is well worth a visit if you are in the Cork area

- Rory

2009-03-24T09:48:00.000Z

Another photograph from affection, by Padraig Spillane

affection

2009-03-23T08:54:00.002Z

Another photograph from affection, by Padraig Spillane. Affection is running from today, Monday 23rd of March until Tuesday the 31st of March at the Bishopstown Library, Wilton, Cork.

affection

2009-03-22T16:15:00.001Z

Affection is a solo exhibition by CorkAP member Padraig Spillane

this post is not a photo post

2009-03-22T11:10:00.001Z

!!! This Post is a Grand Slam !!!

Affection

2009-03-21T10:29:00.002Z

Affection is a solo exhibition by CorkAP member Padraig Spillane

"... The theme of Affection is the intimacy created between photographer and subject. The goal of this work is to illuminate the clues of an individual's identity through gesture, body language, or a certain look.

Affection is running from Monday 23rd of March until Tuesday the 31st of March at the Bishopstown Library, Wilton, Cork. ..."

- Padraig Spillane

Click here to visit Padraigs webpage

Printing in the Crawford

2009-03-16T22:37:00.004Z

Central Park, lake and reflections, NYC. Holga + Kodak film. By Rory O'Toole

Saturday was the second morning spent printing in the darkroom of the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork. It is a fantastic facility, and we are very grateful to Trish and the photography department for making it available to us. The whole group was in on Saturday, so the bonding and feel good factor was high. And plenty of slagging to keep things real! We are preparing for our exhibition in Gallery Nautica in the summer, and the work rate was high.
Although some of us have darkrooms at home, nothing compares with working in a group for a few hours. The company and the chatter is fun, but the encouragement and critique as you work helps you deal with problems that may just leave you frustrated at home. All in all a good morning, and a number more to come before we exhibit.

- Rory

Harry Moore and Malcolm McClay at the Sirius in Cobh

2009-03-12T22:14:00.005Z

Tonight we went to the opening of the Harry Moore and Malcolm McClay exhibition at the Sirius gallery in Cobh, "A Tale of Two Cities". This was a documentary project based on the cities of New Orleans and Cork. Harry Moore's work was by pinhole, and featured views of the city at water level along the river Lee. Malcolm McClay's work documented New Orleans after Hurrican Katrina, with the sky in each picture being used as space for text, telling the story of many survivors of the disaster. The show was opened by Mick Hannigan, Director - Cork Film Festival and a special performance by band Two Time Polka. Excellent stuff!

camera truck

2009-03-09T22:42:00.005Z

Shaun Irvine went back to basics, and built himself a very large camera - in a truck. What a great idea. The truck has travelled around Spain and the States. Read more here

The images that he has produced look fantastic. The negatives measure about 7 feet by 3.5 feet! I'd love to see a print

(c) Shaun Irving http://cameratruck.net/files/ct06_images/CT0665_0.JPG

- Rory

The Americans

2009-03-05T11:40:00.004Z

Robert Frank, Funeral—St.Helena, South Carolina, 1955, gelatin silver print

"... On November 7, 1955, the Swiss photographer Robert Frank was arrested in McGehee, Ark. The police, hoping to ferret out a real live Communist, questioned him for four hours because, as they subsequently explained, he was foreign; he was Jewish; his car was “heavily loaded with suitcases, trunks and a number of cameras;” he had “foreign whiskey,” a “foreign box” of candy, and had given his kids “foreign names.”

If the cops were after political liberals, they had the right man. But Frank was an aesthetic subversive, not a Marxist one. At the time of his arrest, he was traveling around the United States on a Guggenheim fellowship, taking pictures for what he described as “a spontaneous record of a man seeing this country for the first time.” ..."

Read more - click here

Like film cameras?

2009-03-04T22:01:00.002Z

Then this website should have you dribbling - http://tokyocamerastyle.com/

I don’t think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day
— William Eggleston

A pic from the day

2009-03-04T11:59:00.004Z

Ok Ok, this is a digital image. But just to prove we were there on Sunday morning, and it was bloody cold (see previous post). This was about 8am. Left to right, 5 CorkAP'ers - Sanda, Padraig, Rory, Jason, Brian

Another outing

2009-03-03T23:00:00.002Z

So early last Sunday morning I rolled out of bed just before five, stumbled into our drizzly hard water shower and closed my eyes again as the water teased the sleep out. I could have slept in the shower. Another four bodies also pulled themselves into the day, and we met an hour later at the side of the road at the end of the Ballincollig bypass. Dumping one car in a pub car park, we drove to An Gearagh near Macroom to photograph the dawn across the still ESB lake with it's ancient tree stumps poking their heads into the light from the murky depths below. It was cold, but it was beautiful.

No photos to post yet. Maybe tomorrow, if the roll of colour I get back from the chemist has even one gem to match that magical dawn. More to follow ....

- Rory

Untitled

2009-02-27T08:10:00.002Z

By Sanda Galina

This image is one of the shots from the contact sheet in the previous post

Contact Sheets

2009-02-27T08:05:00.003Z

I've always liked contact sheets, especially if the whole roll of film is from one shoot, and therefore the exposure is similar across all the shots. The above sheet is one that Sanda sent me. She didn't mean to post it, but I think it's cool

- Rory

Waterfall

2009-02-26T08:41:00.003Z

By Jason Dunne

New Design

2009-02-23T23:34:00.003Z

I've been searching for new templates for the CorkAP webite. I quite like this design, but there are a few problems. I can't find a way to put in our links, but I should be able to put them in at the top, under the Pull menu. Also, I can no longer put the name of the site at the top, but if you're here, then you know where you are - right?!

Hit the comments button and let me know what you think (it's the number at the right of each post title)

- Rory

Ballycotton Nets

2009-02-18T14:19:00.001Z

By Rory O'Toole.

Taken same day as this one by Jason Dunne - just took me 6 months longer to dev and scan!

Old House, East Ferry, Co. Cork

2009-02-14T16:59:00.001Z

Holga, Ilford XP2 400, frame overlap

By Rory O'Toole

In Spain

2009-02-13T08:28:00.000Z

Holga CFN, Ilford XP2 400, Spain.

By Rory O'Toole

Spanish Fountain

2009-02-10T22:46:00.003Z

This is Fionn in Tarragona in Spain last September. I think it was Tarragona. It was an old Roman city anyway!

Holga CFN, Ilford XP2 400

- Rory

Drying fibre based prints

2009-02-10T22:39:00.003Z

Came across this in an old copy of Black & White Photography magazine (Dec 2007, issue 80).

It follows on from a discussion at a CorkAP meeting recently on the same topic (hint: don't dry your prints by taping them emulsion side in to a shower door. You'll get a nice image transfer, but the print will be ruined!).

Click on the image to read it.

- Rory

Ballycotton

2009-02-10T12:16:00.000Z

By Dee Moriarty

Comeragh Mountains

2009-02-09T08:45:00.001Z

By Dee Moriarty

Untitled

2009-02-06T08:15:00.003Z

By Dee Moriarty

Light After Storm

2009-02-01T10:21:00.001Z

By Brian Dunne

Sitges by Night

2009-01-31T08:55:00.003Z

This is in Sitges in Spain, just south of Barcelona. This promenade is by the beach, just below the Catholic Church, where my brother got married last September.
Nion F90X, Ilford XP2400, scanned neg.

By Rory O'Toole

Siofra pensive

2009-01-30T07:56:00.001Z

By Ann O'Kelly

It's Curtains for CorkAP

2009-01-27T15:44:00.004Z

By Padraig Spillane

Storm clouds Gathering

2009-01-26T09:01:00.001Z

By Dee Moriarty

Pigeon Rocks

2009-01-25T10:32:00.000Z

Photo by Dee Moriarty

Grafton Street

2009-01-22T23:31:00.001Z

By Rory O'Toole

Anchors Up

2009-01-18T09:06:00.000Z

By Brian Dunne

Untitled

2009-01-16T13:59:00.000Z

By Padraig Spillane

Go together like walls and fences

2009-01-14T15:33:00.004Z

I'm Watching You

2009-01-12T15:06:00.002Z

By Brian Dunne

Untitled

2009-01-12T10:00:00.000Z

By Padraig Spillane

Dave

2009-01-11T17:23:00.003Z

By Rory O'Toole

Miroslav Tichý

2009-01-07T21:49:00.006Z

Reading Aidan Dunne in the Irish Times today, there was a review of shows by photographer Miroslav Tichý and Irish artist Orla Whelan. They were somewhat tenuously linked in the article partially due to their subject matter and partially due to the photographic appearance of Whelan's paintings.

Tichý, now in his 80's, is from the Czech republic. He originally trained as a painter before turning to photography. He never intended to exhibit, but his work has recently been discovered. A neighbour, Roman Buxbaum, began collecting his work and this led to his first solo exhibition in Seville in 2004.

What can be said about his methods and photography? Tichý cobbled his cameras together from old Russian bodies and lenses from bits of old pipe and various other appendages. He developed film in a kettle and printed by moonlight. The current generation of "lomographers" could learn a lot from him, not to mention the legions of digital shooters spending thousands on the latest DSLRs and discussing their merits on countless forums across the web.

The resulting photographs are grey, washed out, stained and poorly cared for. They are quite voyeristic, women and the female form being his favourite subject and making up the bulk of his work. I think they make up a fantastic body of work, 30 years of obsessive homemade photography with the eye of an artist.

I suspect that Orla Whelan did not have Tichý on her mind when producing her current exhibition, At The Heart of Chance. What interests me as a photographer is that she has painted almost monochrome. As Dunne says in his article

"...The paint surface is relatively mean, not especially sensual at all, and in this (as well as the fact that the paintings are monochrome) the work seems to refer to photography rather than to, say, Lucian Freud's practice of embodying flesh in pigment through exhaustive observation. ..."

You can read the article in todays Irish Times, or online at the IT website -

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2009/0107/1230936726386.html

Miroslav Tichý , plus, in Gallery 2, Annelies Štrba Photographs . Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Until Jan 22. At the Heart of Chance , paintings by Orla Whelan. Gallery Two: Inhabit Works by Black Church Print Studio members. Draíocht, Blandchardstown Centre

- Rory

Photobooks for Christmas

2009-01-06T15:09:00.002Z

Ilse Bing, 'Hellerhofsiedlung, Frankfurt – my shadow and the shadow of the architect Mart Stam on the roof', 1930. Bequest of Ilse Bing Wolff. Museum no. E.3028-2004

One of my favourite indulgences is photo books. They're expensive, but splashing out on one or two a year shouldn't break the bank, and within a few years you will have a nice little collection. Even more cost effective is to receive them as gifts! I see from the poll that at least four people received photobooks this Christmas. I received one - "Ilse Bing Photography Through The Looking Glass".

Born in 1899 in Frankfurt, Ilse Bing was one of the early users of the Leica, having bought one in 1925. She spent most of the 1930's in Paris, photgraphing people, architecture, fashion, landscape amongst everything else. Forced into exile by the war, she moved to New York, where she continued to photograph until the late 50's, when she put her camera down. She died into 1998.

I have to admit that I had never heard of Ilse Bing until I received this book as a gift. But like hearing old music for the first time, part of the joy and fascination with photography is discovering something or someone whose work was current a long time ago, but is still there to be rediscovered and enjoyed, when you find it.

By the way, I must mention TK Maxx, a shop I love to hate. My Bing book was purchased there at a knock down price of about E20. The cover is a bit tatty, but it's a lovely big hardback edition. TK Maxx's book section is well worth a browse, and definately seems to have some hidden gems

Rory

Passage lifesaver

2009-01-04T22:33:00.001Z

Rory O'Toole

1st post of 2009

2009-01-01T12:37:00.003Z

Lough Rose by Ann O'Kelly.

All the best for 2009!

Watch out for two exhibitions by Cork analogue Photographers this year

Rory

Alhambra Cobble

2008-12-30T15:51:00.000Z

Ann O'Kelly

Siofra in wolly hat

2008-12-22T20:44:00.001Z

Anne O'Kelly

Ballycotton

2008-12-15T22:25:00.000Z

Dee Moriarty

Lovers

2008-12-12T12:22:00.002Z

Rory O'Toole

Almudena

2008-12-11T09:54:00.000Z

Sanda Galina

Surf

2008-12-10T16:01:00.001Z

Jason Dunne

Florence Statue, Evening Light

2008-12-09T08:47:00.002Z

Rory O'Toole

Untitled in summer

2008-12-07T17:14:00.001Z

Sanda Gallina

Grass

2008-12-06T15:56:00.000Z

Dee Moriarty

Foothills of the Comeraghs

2008-12-05T08:03:00.000Z

Dee Moriarty

Waterfall

2008-12-04T08:27:00.000Z

By Jason Dunne

Sydney

2008-12-01T14:40:00.000Z

By Jason Dunne

Surf

2008-11-30T12:02:00.002Z

By Jason Dunne

Lismore

2008-11-19T00:44:00.003Z

By Rory O'Toole
In Lismore, Co. Waterford. Fuji Neopan 400 c41. Nikon F90X, 50mm 1.8D

New photos from Sanda

2008-10-28T09:41:00.006Z

By Sanda Galina

Exhibition opening at Brew cafe

2008-09-21T11:15:00.008+01:00

Cork Analogue Photographers opening night at Brew Cafe on Friday, September 19th. In the photo - Brian, Jason, Rory & Padraig (back) and Jim, Dee, Ann & Sanda (front).

Hanging the exhibition, minutes before the opening!
Some of the photos on the walls.

Harry Moore inspecting the work. Harry very kindly agreed to open the exhibition, and made a wonderful speech. Very much appreciated by all of us in CorkAP.
The staff at Brew did a great job with the food.

Mingling with photography!

The CorkAP gang with Roseanne Lynch from the Crawford College of Art and Design

And with Harry Moore

Untitled

2008-09-16T11:28:00.002+01:00

By Sanda

Black White & Coffee

2008-09-15T08:55:00.000+01:00

Susan Burnstine

2008-08-30T22:51:00.005+01:00

This is a lovely film about photographer Susan Burnstine. Susan creates her own cameras and lenses with what she finds, and produces beautiful, dreamy photographs. Watch the film, see what you think - Susan Burnstine on Fine Art TV

Monday

2008-08-18T09:14:00.006+01:00

By Brian Dunne

The pix channel

2008-08-13T21:57:00.000+01:00

Found this great page (well Mike Johnson did!) with a whole bunch of short interviews with famous photographers - definately worth a look. I have put a link on the side bar too.

Velvia or liquid emulsion

2008-08-13T21:52:00.001+01:00

This is a straight scan from a slide taken on Fuji Velvia last summer.

I have printed this one a bunch of times. The original shot was taken in Killarney with a Holga and 120 film (can't remember the brand). For this image liquid emulsion was painted on water colour paper and exposed. I quite like the result - for a first attempt anyway!

Rory O'Toole

Untitled (Portrait of John)

2008-08-11T13:29:00.001+01:00

By Padraig Spillane

Untitled

2008-08-11T13:18:00.000+01:00

By Padraig Spillane

"Plead the fleeting moment to remain"

2008-08-08T08:35:00.000+01:00

A few more photos from intrepid world photographer, Dee Moriarty

Dee's photos

2008-08-06T12:55:00.000+01:00

By Dee Moriarty

Debs

2008-08-06T08:58:00.001+01:00

Debs by Brian Dunne

Jason's Page

2008-08-06T08:49:00.000+01:00

The 50mm section

Welcome to Cork Analogue Photographers

a photograph is a moment in time captured on film and with photography we document history as it happens.

these are some my latest moments

Cork Analogue Photographers

2008-08-06T08:43:00.000+01:00

This is the homepage of Cork Analogue Photographers. We are a group of photographers who work with film cameras and traditional darkroom processes. We enjoy the process of producing fine prints by hand using just light, chemicals and paper.

Cork Analogue Photographers will be exhibiting in Cork in the near future. Dates will be posted here, and leaflets distributed around the city.