The Dublin Community Blog

Happy New Year 2008 – I thought I would post some of the images I captured from around Dublin during Christmas as a way of easing myself back into the Dublin Blog after a ridiculous absence, no excuse just busy and sorry about that So here’s to a great year, Sláinte everyone.

It seems it is all happening in Stephen’s Green these days, not only is there Shakespeare in the Park but there is also a wonderful photography exhibition, Spirit of the Wild, on the pathway around the inside of the park by Steve Bloom featuring some of these works. It will be on show until October 7th and has been running since the middle of August apparently. But what a great idea, lots of wonderful images, printed BIG and exhibited outside, I was in heaven.

Arrghhh run there’s a bear chasing you (thanks to my model Geffrey Wang who agreed to pose for me) Unfortunately I only took one shot (note to self, again, ensure you have your shot) and there’s more than a little camera shake – eh we were eh running away from the bear *ahem* but you get the idea

Anyway there’s lots of amazing wildlife images, wonderful, so it is well worth a look. I was there just before 7pm and the light was starting to go but the shots are incredible.

I’ve come over all showbiz pap after going to TV3′s Autumn Schedule launch last night. There were all sorts of famous faces there, like eh Eric Pollard from Emmerdale, Donal MacIntyre and Shayne Ward who, it appeared anyway, performed for all the ladies in the audience. Here’s some pics from the evening, the others I can’t show because it was free drink all evening and it wouldn’t be fair

Some of us here met up the other evening for the midnight launch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I wrote about it on my own blog which you can read here, but I thought I’d post some photographs from the other night here. I’m sure Decs will add more at some stage and you can see more on my Flickr account here.

 

   

The following pic illustrates what I love about Dublin, theres always something around the corner.

Enjoyed meeting up with around 25 or 30 eager amateur photographers on Saturday at the Dublin Flickr event. We gathered at the spire on O’Connell Street and then headed out from there to shoot the city. These people take their photography – and their cameras – pretty seriously. And there I was, with my pocket-size Canon PowerShot, surrounded by these impressive kazillion megapixel cameras with monster lenses. I was way out of my league. There was no need to feel intimidated, however, and everyone was eager to answer my questions about such things as what to look for in a good camera, what brands they prefer, etc. The passion and pure enjoyment of photography, whether as a hobby or an art form, was contagious. And of course, the pictures themselves turned out brilliantly. Be sure to check ‘em out at the “meet Dublin� Flickr pool.

Something that struck me as we walked through Dublin was the number of people out to protest or demonstrate about a variety of issues. There was a demonstration right there on O’Connell against “Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.� (Is it really that simple?!) There was also protesting against abortion, racism in the Irish government, and the fur trade. (The fur trade folks are there on Grafton pretty regularly throughout the year.) There was even some guy holding a sign with something about an Anglo-Freemasons conspiracy.

So, if you were in Dublin city centre on Saturday, whether as a demonstrator, a tourist, or simply to shop, you may very well have been caught on camera!

There are currently discussions taking place over on the flickr Dublin Group about arranging a flickr meetup in Dublin on Saturday May 12th. I’ve added it to my diary and hope to get along, it would be great if this got a bit of PR and turned into a pretty big event, so, anything that people can do to spread the word and turn up would be cool.

Hopefully at least some of the bloggers here will turn up and grab some shots and write home about it and we can make this a more regular event.