Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All tagged Photography
Back in April my wife and I took a road trip to the northern most region in Ireland, the Inishowen peninsula in Co. Donegal. We were there for a few days and took the opportunity to photograph the northern most point on the island of Ireland, as well as some of the incredible beaches in the area.
Earlier this year, I had a chance to visit two of the cities I’ve always wanted to see: Copenhagen and Stockholm. Ever since visiting Oslo a few years ago, I’ve really wanted to see the rest of the region and Copenhagen and Stockholm were on the bucket list. So, when I got the chance to see both of these cities, I jumped at the chance. This wasn’t going to be a strictly photographic trip - I was there with my wife on a business trip, but it was still an opportunity to get to visit these wonderful cities.
When it comes to photography, I have a lot of differing tastes. I don’t just mean photographic genres, bur rather images that appeal to me. I like good composition and storytelling as much as the next person, but I also have an affiliation for colour and texture. And sometimes, Nature provides us with an abundance of both of these.
Of all the things - photography related - that I’ve done over the years, I’ve had plenty of missed opportunities, and made plenty of mistakes. However, there’s only really one thing that I truly regret. And that’s selling my Canon 5D Mark II and 24-105mm lens. There isn’t a year that goes by that I don’t regret that decision.
Near to where I live is what is a rather remarkable place to find in a city. Called “Airfield”, it is a 38 acre site which features a 19th century estate, gardens and a fully working farm. Recently, on an overcast and rainy day, my wife and I paid a visit to the estate for a walk around the gardens, to get away from the outside world for a few hours and I ended up taking a ridiculous number of photos.
Like many people, while I’ve been lucky enough to travel abroad quite a bit, I haven’t actually spent much time exploring my own country of Ireland, and I’ve actually been to surprisingly little of the island. With Covid making international travel complicated and not something I particularly want to partake in right now, we recently decided to take a few days holiday in the southeast of Ireland. One of the most interesting places we visited was to the Hook peninsula to visit the famous Hook Lighthouse
I like coffee. A lot. It’s probably one of my biggest obsessions after photography. I have about 10 different methods of making coffee, including three different coffee machines. I like all different kinds of coffee, and I’ll make a different type depending on the time of day and my mood. At this point, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with photography, but bear with me. It’s a bit of a journey, but we’ll get there.
On one of my trips to New York, back in 2009, I was walking through Central Park on a beautiful sunny day, and wandered across a baseball game. I had never seen a baseball game in real life before and was chuffed to see this, it being such an icon of Americana, and this only being my second trip to the country.
Mylio has just received a pretty big new update. The latest version adds some significant new features and is available now. Also, the company recently changed its pricing levels.
Summer finally arrived in Ireland last week. It only lasted for a day or two, but we enjoyed it while it lasted! It’s actually been really cold so far through most of June, but we did have a few hot days, and so I headed out to see how people were enjoying the sunshine.
A few weeks ago I read a post on a fairly popular website from someone arguing that photography as an art from was being ruined because its become so accessible. The author was decrying the fact that anyone can take a photo now and anyone can call themselves a photographer. They believe that this has diluted the purity of the art (I’m paraphrasing) and are ruining it for the “real photographers”.
At the start of the new year, I like to outline some of my photography related goals and plans for the upcoming year. Some of these are aspirational, and some are more practical. Many won’t get accomplished, but its still a useful exercise to write things down. While some are more longer term goals, I also have a couple of more short term projects that I want to talk about too.
I’ve been taking a little break this week, and I got to spend some time in London. The city, like the rest of the UK and Ireland, is currently experiencing a heatwave, and as someone who doesn’t do well in the heat, I’ve found it quite oppressive and hard to function. Anyway, I haven’t really been taking many photos, but here are a random few from the few days in the city.
In this episode of “The Photo Geek Show” I take a look at behind the scenes of shooting one of my YouTube videos. I tried to shoot 3 videos at once, and things didn’t exactly go according to plan. I also look at how I edit and assemble the photos and video footage into a finished product!
I’ve been plugging away at my YouTube channel for a while now, and I had this idea for something that I wanted to try, but it’s taken me some time to get it together. I have lots of different bits and pieces that I do, and I have a few different “series”, such as “Street Photo Diary”. Instead of all these disparate threads, I wanted to try and create one good video a week. With that in mind, here is the first episode of that new series. For the moment I’m calling it “The Photography Geek Show” although that may change. I’m open to suggestions!
I was recently back in one of my regular overseas haunts, the beautiful German town of Heppenheim. I’ve been there several times before now, and you can find some of those previous visits documented on my blog. The sleepy little German town is partly modern, but also partly medieval, and that is its real charm. In this post you can see some of the photos that I took while there.
In this second episode of my new travel and photography vlog, I spent a few days in London. It was actually two separate short trips, and I took the opportunity to do some street photography on the streets of London, as well as relaxing and enjoying the unseasonably good weather of last week.
Last week I was approached for an interview about one of my photography projects by a fairly prominent online newspaper here in Ireland. The piece they were interested in was a project I did charting the progress of the cross-city tram construction that took place in Dublin over the past few years. The request came out of the blue and took me a little by surprises, but they did a good article following the interview.
