This very beautiful stone building at Ashtown Gates is known as Bessborough Lodge. It is joined to another gate lodge which you can just about see at the right hand edge of the photograph. There are two lodges at the Ashtown Gates, very beautiful matching brown lodges facing each other at the exit from the park. This particular building was designed by Decimus Burton and was completed way back in 1848. The house was originally built as a police barracks and was used to house policemen serving in the park and also had room to accommodate prisoners. It was obviously a fully serving police station when it was originally built but now it accommodates staff serving in the park.
I actually ended up chatting to some people coming out of one of the lodges after taking this photograph and they reliably informed me that the police barracks had several drunk tanks in it. Anybody caught wandering around the park under the influence of alcohol would be swiftly taken away and thrown in the cell for the night to sleep it off. Obviously drunkenness in the park was frowned upon back then, as I suppose it is nowadays too in fairness. Can only imagine how busy they would have been after the Swedish House Mafia concert there last year.

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To purchase a signed 10 x 10 inch print of this photo, just click the button below.

You can either pay directly via paypal or with your own credit card. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Paypal account, you don’t actually need one to simply pay with your credit card.

The Prints are €25.00 each and that includes shipping to anywhere in the world. Your print will be made to order and will ship out within 48 hours.
If you would like a bigger or smaller size please don’t hesitate to email me with your requests.

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Ok, so this is a recent film shot of a rather beautiful lodge in the park called Hibernian Cottage. The house is situated just at the entrance gates to St. Mary’s Hospital which was originally the Hibernian Asylum or the Royal Hibernian Military School as it was later renamed. The Hibernian Asylum was original built to help orphaned children of soldiers who had fallen during the war and was then extended to cover the needs of destitute families of soldiers leaving Ireland for services overseas.
This lodge has for many years given me so much trouble to photograph that any sane person would have given up at this stage. The big problem with trying to get a really good photograph of this lodge would be the fact that you can’t really see that much of it from across the road. Normally I would just get a little closer but that is not really a solution in this scenario. My only other option was to cut down all the hedges at the dead of night and hope that nobody caught me, but cutting down trees as you may well know is not really my style now is it. So I would try going back at different times of the day and even different times of the year to see what I could do to capture this really beautiful lodge on film.
Right, so there I am with some really lovely long shadows beginning to appear on an early summers morning, the branches above me making that lovely x like shape on the grass in the foreground. I must admit at this stage I was really beginning to feel good about this one. I spent a while walking around from side to side to just get the best angle of the lodge and the shadows. Once I had decided on an angle that I was happy with I got the camera all set up and made all my little adjustments. By the time I was all ready to go when this delivery van arrives and proceeds to stop right in the centre of my shot, to be honest I think the driver was on his phone but he sat there in my photograph for at least ten minutes. By the time he decided to move on and go on his way this scene you see in the photograph had pretty much miraculously appeared. The ladies in their wheelchairs and their carers had stopped off at the gates of the lodge to pick some flowers from around the gateway. I rattled off as many shots as the camera could handle before they all walked away and everything was back to normal. This was my favourite of them all. I really like the sense of movement that the girl in the middle conveys. I must admit that something as simple as the shadows on the wall really make me love this photo above the rest in the series.

The photograph was taken on a Bronica medium format film camera using Kodak Tri-x 400 speed film.

The print was made using my very own bare hands in a traditional darkroom.

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To purchase a signed 10 x 10 inch print of this photo, just click the button below.

You can either pay directly via paypal or with your own credit card. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Paypal account, you don’t actually need one to simply pay with your credit card.

The Prints are €25.00 each and that includes shipping to anywhere in the world. Your print will be made to order and will ship out within 48 hours.
If you would like a bigger or smaller size please don’t hesitate to email me with your requests.

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Big thanks to James for all the hard work.

I don’t like to do things by half so whilst getting ready for my first really big exhibition I also decided to teach myself how to build a website in my spare time. It has been great fun learning how to do things like this, it’s very much more challenging than a blog but it’s close to being finished now.

If you have some free time I would love you all to have a look and maybe let me know here on the blog what you think of it. I am very much open to constructive criticism, or any type of criticism, it doesn’t really matter.

Anyway the site can be viewed at www.davekphotography.com.

Thanks

Dave

Here’s a little slideshow of my exhibition in the Phoenix Park so far. These shots were all taken after two long days of hanging and constant moving around of photos.

I hope you enjoy it and thank you all for your continuing support.

Dave

The show will officially open on Sunday 13th of January 2013 at 3pm with a short talk by myself and a very special guest talk from the former park superintendent John McCullen. John is also the author of “An Illustrated History Of The Phoenix Park” which has pretty much become my bible over the last few years. You are all very welcome to come and join me.

The show will run until the end of January and its totally free to visit.

There will be over 40 large format framed prints in the show and copies of each photograph will also be available to purchase. I will have signed and hand numbered framed prints available to sell at the show throughout the month.

The Visitor Centre is situated about halfway up the main road [Chesterfield Avenue]. If go as far as the big roundabout with the large phoenix monument on it then look out for the signpost to the Visitor Centre just before the turn for Aras and Uachtarain. There is lots of parking in there and a playground for the kids if you are planning on bringing the wee ones.

Full details in the image below.

Ok, so they play cricket in the Phoenix Park and I know absolutely nothing about cricket. They use a bat and a ball, both are included in this photograph. There is a man who hits the ball called the batsman, also included in this shot and finally a guy who throws the ball called the bowler, he is not in the photograph. That’s pretty much my knowledge of cricket and it’s participants [most of which was gleaned from the internet]. I must say though, in it’s defence, cricket is a splendidly good way to spend a summer’s afternoon regardless of my lack of understanding. My spectator sport of choice would be Gaelic football but there is no chance of being able to lie back in the grass and a get a shot like this at Croke Park. Firstly I would most likely be removed by the stewards and secondly I would be trampled by blood thirsty GAA men in search of a football that one of them may or may not have in his possession. If you attend modern GAA matches you will know what I mean by that.

Anyway, cricket makes for good photographs so therefore I now like cricket.

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To purchase a signed 12 x 8 inch print of this photo, just click the button below.

You can either pay directly via paypal or with your own credit card. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Paypal account, you don’t actually need one to simply pay with your credit card.

The Prints are €25.00 each and that includes shipping to anywhere in the world. Your print will be made to order and will ship out within 48 hours.
If you would like a bigger or smaller size please don’t hesitate to email me with your requests.

Alternatively you can purchase unsigned prints or postcards of this photo from the Redbubble site from as little as €2.50 by clicking this link.

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I was actually out for a stroll a few weeks back on a very determined mission to try and continue my quest to photograph the lodges of the Phoenix Park. I had taken my bicycle with me to the park for a change, if you saw the size of my Bronica camera and tripod you wouldn’t really wonder why I drive all the time. I had this very precarious set-up which involved some old fashioned sturdy elastic straps to keep the tripod attached to the crossbar of the bike. A disaster waiting to happen really. Thankfully, said disaster happened whilst I was cycling in soft [and quite long] grass. Basically the elastic made a sound like “Boing”, the tripod fell to the ground and I had to make a very rapid stop, before I lost my tripod. I was pretty lucky the strap didn’t catch one of my legs [or something further up] as these things are like some old torture aid.

Anyway, I saw this scene and I started photographing.

The lodges can wait, they ain’t going anywhere in the near future.

This photo was taken on a Bronica medium format camera using Kodak Tri-X 120mm film. The print was made by my very own hands in a traditional wet darkroom.

(Comments and opinions are greatly appreciated, please feel free to let me know what you think)

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To purchase a signed 10 x 10 inch print of this photo, just click the button below.

You can either pay directly via paypal or with your own credit card. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Paypal account, you don’t actually need one to simply pay with your credit card.

The Prints are €25.00 each and that includes shipping to anywhere in the world. Your print will be made to order and will ship out within 48 hours.
If you would like a bigger or smaller size please don’t hesitate to email me with your requests.

Alternatively you can purchase unsigned prints or postcards of this photo from the Redbubble site from as little as €2.50 by clicking this link.

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Here’s one of the photos that features in the exhibition.

Directions and opening times can be found by clicking this link

This shot was taken in the stunning surrounds of the Peoples Flower Garden, you can find them just on the right hand side as you come in the main gates of the park.

The photographic print was made in the old fashioned way by my very own hands in a darkroom. The picture was taken using a Bronica medium format camera on Kodak Tri-x film, possibly my all time favourite film at this stage.

(Comments and opinions are greatly appreciated, please feel free to let me know what you think)

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To purchase a signed 10 x 10 inch print of this photo, just click the button below.

You can either pay directly via paypal or with your own credit card. Don’t worry if you don’t have a Paypal account, you don’t actually need one to simply pay with your credit card.

The Prints are €25.00 each and that includes shipping to anywhere in the world. Your print will be made to order and will ship out within 48 hours.
If you would like a bigger or smaller size please don’t hesitate to email me with your requests.

Alternatively you can purchase unsigned prints or postcards of this photo from the Redbubble site from as little as €2.50 by clicking this link.

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