Ok, so the story behind this photo goes like this……….
Here I was wandering around my favourite place in Dublin and I stumble upon this very large big top style tent well hidden in the trees. The tent was just at the side of the visitor centre in the Phoenix Park and on the day I was wandering around there was lots of activity with trucks, forklifts and burly security men. At first I thought it must be some kind of kooky circus setting up in the park but I thought the fencing and security was a bit too tight for it to be just a circus, I also kind of wondered why it would be so well hidden in the trees.
Anyway I proceeded to set up my camera and started snapping some very long exposure infra-red shots of the tent as it was being assembled. On several occasions I noticed security men, all dressed in black, passing me by in a very casual just having a wander in the park style. One or two of them would stop and have a quick chat, it was pretty obvious they wanted to know exactly what I was up to. I’m happily clicking away thinking the lads are just a little bit too concerned about what I’m doing so I finished shooting and decided to hightail it away out of the area, just in case.

On the way out of the park I bumped into a friend of mine and he asked me if I was going to see the much advertised Tom Waits show in the big top tent………………….DOH !

You can now purchase prints or postcards of this photo on my Redbubble page here

I must admit I really like the desolate almost cold like feeling about this particular photograph. The photo was taken on a rather cold spring morning a few years ago, there was some beautiful early morning sunshine but the ground was still frosty underfoot and there was a general damp feeling about the air.

The photo displays the fact that whilst this park in probably one of the most beautiful in the world it still has its imperfections in places, the fence seems to be under the control of the trees as their roots have bent it out of shape over the course of many many years.

The photo was taken in an area between the visitor centre and the presidents house, two of the best kept regions in the park so it’s nice to suddenly turn a corner and stumble upon this scene.

You can purchase prints or postcards of his photo from as little as €2.50 by clicking this link.

Sometimes mistakes turn into my favourite photographs. This photo was not necessarily a bad mistake as such, I wasn’t to know what was going wrong somewhere deep within the lens or camera, but if you look very closely at the very centre of the photograph you will see a strange symmetrical shape slightly brighter than it’s surroundings. This is caused by reflected light within the lens, usually when you shoot directly into the sun. I am not sure if this happened within the lens itself or something very unusual happened between the sun and my infra-red filter. Anyway, I am not going to bore you with details of reflected light and the effects of shooting directly into the sun, the majority of times this happens to me I tend to immediately reject the photo. For some reason I kept going back to this one and started thinking about the rights and wrongs of the perfect photograph, by this I mean all those sticky rules of photography that so many people seem to feel the need to abide by.

Trust me, if I entered this photograph into any competition it would fail immediately because of that flare of light in the middle, but I’m beginning to grow very fond of it. It’s strange though, if I tried to replicate that effect exactly the same way it would be virtually impossible.

I’m now thinking of setting up my own photography awards and guess what………………..the winner is…………..ME.

Please feel free to leave your comments, they really are greatly appreciated.