Engagement shoot - Neil and Emma

My brother and his beautiful wife got married in 2016, this is the engagement shoot I did for them a few months before the big day.

Bella

Our beautiful Bella went to sleep for the final time yesterday.

From collon animal sanctuary she came to us as a skinny ill puppy and she left us today (too soon) a beautiful happy loved pet. She has passed away after a short battle with a very specifically placed aggressive little tumour which was growing rapidly. We bought her a little extra time with surgery in December with the hope it would give us a few extra months together. We squeezed in all the love in the world in that time. She drove us mad half the time but she was loyal, patient, (hated the postman!) loved our kids (and eating doddies), our kids loved her, she was amazing to cuddle and play with and she loved us unconditionally! We'll miss her so much, her wagging tail when we get home from work and curling up on the couch with her in the evening. Rest in peace our Bella! Xxx

Graffiti Art

We went out today to take some photos of my husbands bike against the local graffiti, while there I took a few sneaky photos of Pádraig. Here are the results...

Black and White melancholic Pádraig

Vibrant coloured happy Pádraig

Give the gift of blood this Christmas!!!!

Give Blood this Christmas!!!!

My story:

This time one year ago I gave birth to my son Pádraig. It was the most exhilarating and scary experience of my life. After an induced labour of 8 hours my son was born. Within a few minutes of his birth it transpired that something was wrong, I was hemorrhaging badly. I received immediate care and was rushed to surgery. After 40 minutes of frantic and magnificent work by the surgical team they announced I had stopped bleeding. In the end I lost just under 3 litres of recorded blood loss due to a torn cervix and my blood vessels in my uterus not closing after birth. I received 4 blood transfusions, 2 platelet transfusions along with a mix of other stuff. I was kept over night for observation in the high dependency ward where fabulous night nurses looked after me. The next day I finally got to meet my son properly, it was the end of an unexpected nightmare and the start of a fantastic new adventure with my husband and son.

The surgical team in the Our Lady of Lourdes delivery ward were amazing and I can't thank them enough for the treatment I received on the day of my son's birth. I especially want to thank the Irish Blood Transfusion services for the stellar work they do on a daily basis. I would like to encourage EVERYONE who can to give blood this Christmas season, it is amazing how simple a gift it is. You can save lives with this gift. I know as I'm convinced my life was saved that day by the treatment I got and the transfusions I received. I cant explain how grateful I am to the people out there who gave the blood and platelets which saved my life. I remember thinking while I was in surgery that I was going to give blood from now on, not knowing that once you have received blood you can no longer give blood.

Thank you for reading this and I hope it encourages some of you to give blood this Christmas.   

Happy Christmas! 

My new muse

I have been very busy taking photos of my little fella. Turns out he is very photogenic and stays nice and calm while I am taking my photos. Here are a selection of my favourites so far. I plan on getting the picture of his hand onto canvas. My husband wants me to photoshop out the dirt under Pádraig's nails, but I personally like that they are not perfectly clean. Baby's hands and feet are just good enough to eat at the best of times and I was determined to try to capture them like this. 

In the shot below I was playing with the position of the sun. I love the flair which appears in this photo, I only wish I had captured his eyes in focus, then this shot would be perfect.

I took a series of photos of Pádraig playing with his teddy on the couch while in the nip one day. I had a towel under him in case he decided to do his business while there. He was very good the whole way through until I decided I wanted to take a few shots without the towel, leaving the dark leather as my background. I snapped one shot before he decided to pee all over the couch, luckily it is leather and easy to clean. Here is the one shot I got: 

This one I find really cute as his facial expression is striking. Again, my focus is a little out.

Welcome to the world Pádraig O'Flaherty

Right it is time for me to get back on the horse, it has been far too long since I entered a post here or did any decent photography in general. Since February 2011 I have gotten engaged, married and become a Mum, so lets just say I have been kept busy! Now that my little boy Pádraig has been born, I am eager to get back to it. I am looking into investing in some good lighting as the winter weather is not helping me when it comes to getting some natural light to give me the quality of photos I am after. So before I get that far, here are some photos I have taken of my little son, one of which I have edited a little with 3 others untouched. Hopefully I can improve on these as I continue back into it (I feel I need to really reacquaint myself with my poor underutilised camera).

Ok, I have been officially terrible at keeping this up in the last year or so. I thought for now I would at least add the link to our Wedding video (photo slideshow).

Sadhbh and Niall's Wedding Slideshow

Downhill Biking

Myself and Niall took two days off this week and we couldn't have picked two better days if we tried. We spent the first day doing wedding things and then chilling in the garden. Today we went for a spin up the Cooley mountains, or known locally as the Lumpers. What a day! We did a bit of cross country up and over the Lumpers and then Niall kitted up in his downhill gear for some jumps and photos! Here are a few from the jump at the top of the downhill run... :)

Our engagement shoot

On the 23rd April myself and Niall had our first ever photoshoot, for our engagement. We decided to go all out on it and bring props etc. We wanted to make it as much fun as possible. I think from the result you will see that we just so much fun. Our photographer Christina is so extremely talented and her photos are everything we expected and more. I just love this sneak preview on her blog and the photography is just one more thing that I cant wait for on our Wedding day. Wedding's are the most fun! We should do one every year! :)

Check out Christina's blog post of our engagement here:

http://www.brosnanphotographic.com/2011/05/sadhbh-nialls-beach-picnic-engagement-on-dollymount-strand-co-dublin/

A Cupcake Sunday

 

This Sunday we celebrated my sister Aideen's birthday with a family meal at home. I love these days when we all sit around the table and shout over each other to be heard. My Dad will often say something random and silly that has nothing to do with the conversation, or he will break into song due to a word someone has said that has sparked something in him to sing. My brother always starts his meal with "hey, why did she get more then me?" (He is turning 30 this year and will never change). My Mum who soaks up the feeling of having her family around the kitchen table together with a quiet smile, between her preparing, cooking and serving the dinner. And Niall sits back and enjoys the madness of another Ahern family dinner, a family he will soon be an official part of. :)

Aideen wanted to cook cupcakes for her birthday and I jumped at the chance to take pictures of something so pretty. So I followed her round the kitchen snapping her every move and here is the result. Some mouth watering pink, green, blue and yellow cupcakes. And to top the day off my brothers girlfriend sent down 10 cupcakes from Dublin for her birthday, so overall it was a Cupcake Sunday bonanza! :)

Its been a while since I last updated my blog (for shame).To get back into the swing of it, here is a picture of Niall on our first day skiing in Andorra. In this shot I wanted to bring all the attention to Niall in full concentration, while softening and boosting the whites in the background. 

Meadow Pipit - my competition winner

I entered my first monthly competition in my photography club this week and was delighted to receive a 20 for this shot. This is top marks in the club so as you can imagine I am absolutely chuffed. I had a smile from ear to ear. This shot was taken out of my car window up in the Cooley mountains on a very cold Sunday morning. This little fellow was hopping along the edge of the cliff for around 5 minutes giving me loads of time to setup my shot. I used all 300mm of my 70-300mm Sigma lens and with a little help from one of the other club members in post production we arrived with this composition.


I entered 3 other photos, the seascape of Blackrock featured in a post below, the man shoveling the snow and my New York cityscape. All of which did very well in the competition as well. A very encouraging evening where the feedback I received was fantastic and I am now really excited about the next competition.


I'm officially hooked. :)

Clearing the Snow

This man spent ages clearing a perfect path for the patrons of St Patrick Cathedral in Dundalk. The snow had only just fallen and it fell again not long after so I would say he repeated this job many times during that day and week.

The Snowy Season

Blackrock bay during the new snowy season in Ireland. Even the beach wasn't left out during the snow. The sea brought in chunks of ice each day like something out of the arctic eventually becoming like a slush puppy where it began creating sculptures of ice at the edge of the water.


This is something I have never seen in my lifetime and it wasn't seen during my parents lifetime either. A sign of global warming or the coming of an new ice age? Either way it is extremely beautiful.

Fire Hydrant in NYC

A psychedelic fire hydrant in Soho, NY. Obviously I've played with the colours a little but I really like this shot.

Snowbella

Taken during the snowy season we are having here in Ireland. I love that the only colour in the photo is Bella's big brown eyes. It almost looks like I have intentionally left only her eyes in colour but really this is a colour photo. I achieved what I wanted creatively in this photo as I used a f5.6 aperture so as I would have her face and ears pin sharp and have the rest of her body just slightly out of focus so as your eyes are draw to her face and then her eyes. I like this one. :)

Happy Holidays

 

Last week myself and some of my work mates made this snowman for the purposes of using it in the company Christmas card. Here are the before and after shots. Hopefully it will be used as the Christmas card. We are also designing an animated card so this is the backup plan if that one does not work out.

Happy Christmas xXx

Ice Hockey in action

I took this shot at an Ice Hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Calgary Flames in Madison Square Gardens from the 'nose bleeds'. It was taken at a great distance using a really high ISO of 560 at 300mm with a shutter speed of 1/250 so as to capture the movement but this was at the cost of the light quality. In the end I got a dark photo with quite a bit of noise. I like the pose of the Hockey player so much I really wanted to do something with this shot. Anyway, here I have tried two different approaches when post producing this photo. One was to go with the extreme and play on the darkness and noise, the other was to try and resurrect this photo. I'm not sure which works better if at all. Would be great to get some feedback on this one...

New York, New York

So we made it to and from New York in one piece, the legs are suitably aching from all the walking but it was a great trip as only New York can be. Here is a 0.62 exposure time with a 1600 ISO and an f22 aperture, this was so as it would be slow enough to pick up as much movement in the traffic but also quick enough that I could do this handheld. I love the guy on the side walk who is in great contrast to the speeding traffic.

My Flickr Photostream

Ah tissue

I love the movement in this picture, it is almost like I have caught this man in action as he is about to sneeze.

This photo was taken in a wee building at the back of the Charity Shop in Blackrock. This place is a dream come true for anyone who likes taking photos of old rustic buildings and artifacts, especially the toilet, it is so cute and old worldly (its also freezing). A hidden gem. There are a few other lovely surprises behind this shop... tbc.

Apple Berry on my new Flickr page

So, I'm stuck in work as always, waiting for renders. (snore) So I thought I may as well do something 'fruitful' with my time. I recently started a flickr photostream. This is just so as I have a nice link to send to peeps with a nice easy slideshow of my work. One of my favourites so far, which I felt it would have a nice home here too, was this one, "Apple Berry". When my Dad saw it he though it was an apple. :)

Check it out here.

My Photo of the week

This was taken after my first photography class. I am finally not relying on auto to take my photos. I took this at such a high res that I had to shrink the file to put it up here. There was some colour loss though as the green of the grass in the original is amazing.


This is my photo of the week.

The moon rise

My study of the night sky continues with this 30" exposure of the moon rising on Sunday night. It took a while to get the right exposure time, I think the trick is the longer the better to get great night photos.

Tis the season

A little bit of fun. I spent today carving this pumpkin and attempting pumpkin soup at the same time. The soup was a bit of a disaster but the carving turned out pretty well.

Happy Halloween :)

Bella, ever my muse

Bella hunting for birds on the beach.

Silver and White

Just for fun.

The morning sky

And in contrast here is the morning sun (with a couple of swans). What a gorgeous morning. I woke up early with Bella on Saturday at around 8am and when I saw this sunrise I ran outside in my PJ's to get this shot before it was too late.

The night sky

I spent ages trying to get a decent shot of the moon over the sea the other night. This was the best out of the bunch... although its hard to capture how gorgeous this moon was. I'm sure a few touch ups would make this photo amazing but I am leaving it in its raw state for the minute. This is the beginning of my night shots, I will get studying :)

Competition Entries so far

My entry into the GoIreland.com photo competition:
http://www.goireland.com/photos.htm

Bella chasing after the ball in Blackrock beach, Louth.