It’s been a while since I have typed some words out. Last time I done this was when I was in Belfast for New Years eve. Funnily enough, here I am on the train back up to Belfast.
The reason I am heading back up here, I will get to later.
So lately I have been shooting with the FujiFilm XE-1. I have shot with it in the past but was shooting with an old school film manual focus lens taken off of the FED 5B. I never extremely got any joy from shooting with this as my eyesight is not the very best lately and its hard to get great tack sharp focus when using manual focus. Especially if the type of stuff you are trying to photograph is street related stuff and trying to be the next Cartier-Bresson and capture that moment in a split second.
A friend of mine from work also shoots with Fuji and we have been talking the odd time about cameras and the fact that we need to get out and shoot more. So, i’m telling him about the lens and how much I would love to have quick focus and he tells me that he has a lens there that is just sitting in the box. The 23mm F2!
I said feck it and he gave me it to try for a few days. I fell in love straight away. I now have this great little body which fits in my pocket and perfectly in my hand, and now I also have this amazing lens at F2 which soaks up the light beautifully! Needless to say, my photos started to take a shift in a new direction.
My street portraits have become more intimate as its a fixed 23mm making me get closer to my subjects, and i’m also doing this “shooting from the hip” thing that lomographers love to talk about.
With that, I have also created the store on this site which has changed my thinking around photos. Im seeing still objects which i’m beginning to now photograph. These still objects are mostly NEON signs.
I don’t know why the Fuji XE-1 has brought my attention towards these lights, but it has and i’m excited about this new thinking.
Obviously the majority of the signs around the city are going to be bars and restaurants which may attract the owners if they were to see my images, but I am shooting these images without that thought in my mind, at the time. I am extremely loving these shots. The colours seem to be bleeding from the signs on to the walls, the sunsetting in some of them in the background. It just seems like the perfect time of day to be alive,
My first thought is, someone from Ireland who has now moved abroad may be interested in these images. Someone who misses home and wants to bring a bit of the Dublin street back into their “gaf” in Australia , UK , Brazil or where ever they may be in the world now.
So I create one or two framed printed images which can be purchased from my store.
Once these are up snd running and available for order, I then created a promotional add on Facebook to spread the word. Boom! it actually worked. Not the way I intended it to work, as I still haven’t sold any of my prints :) but it worked as I have been offered two well paying jobs.
The main one, and the reason I am typing this out on the train to Belfast right now is I have been asked to capture those same NEON style images for several bars around the Belfast area. So I am heading up here now as we speak with this little beauty of a cam the Fuji XE1 with the 23mm F2 lens which has started this whole thing, along with my Canon 550D and the Sigma 1.8.
I suppose the moral of the story for myself is, Just shoot what ever it is your eyes are attracted to and if its quality work that you create, someone will enjoy it and will want the same style of work to be created for what ever project it is they are creating. These images I will create today will be used within a cocktail booklet and I hope to get my hands on a copy when it’s finished.
Check out below, the images I have created around Dublin which have led to this adventure in Belfast today the 24th of January 2020.
Also, if you are reading this and are interested, any of the below images are available for print.
Just get in-touch.
