
… but the photographer, that makes the photos. Many people think you need great gear to take great photos. Or shall I say, they equate a “big” (and hence automatically “good”) camera with shooting only “good” photos. While there is some truth in this, there are also a few misconceptions.
First of all, think of a cook and his pots. A ★★★★★ star cook can cook a great meal pretty much anywhere, even in your shitty student accomodation kitchen with the most pathetic, 25 year old pots. But in turn, buying some ridiculously expensive, extra special coated cast iron cooking gear alone probably won’t make you a good cook…
It’s the same with cameras. Of course, having better pots and pans helps a good cook to prepare his meals more easily, and special equipment is needed for some special treats (say a small blow torch for a decent crème brûlée). In photography, sometimes there’s no way around a decent tele lens with a wide aperture, or a super wide angle, or a flash gun. But given a few ingredients, its a cook’s experience, taste or shall I say his “art” that allows him to prepare a good meal. The same holds for a photographer: seeing interesting subjects, lines, colours, light situations, then creating strong compositions, not to mention careful post-processing — that’s actually all independent of what camera you’re using!
Anyway, I just want to rant about all the people that tell me “oh, that’s a great camera, you must be a great photographer”. No, first of all you probably have no clue about the camera, what is capable of (and what not). Second, just having the means and the guts to spend ridiculous amounts of money on photo equipment just doesn’t make you good photographer — that just means you’re either rich, or you’ve lost your senses.
It’s what comes out at the very end of the process, what’s left after you have made all those millions of decisions involved in taking and processing a picture — this is what may or may not make you a “good” photographer.
| Focal length: | 6.3 mm (≈35 mm) |
| Aperture: | ƒ/8.0 |
| Exposure: | 1/320 s |
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Posted at 18:16

Reminiscent of the other post of a cross-processed “nautical detail”, here’s another one.
I took it just last Friday when we had a friend of Steffi’s visiting us (Lenko), who’s currently on a Europe-Africa-Tour (he otherwise lives in Canada). We did a little day tour around County Wicklow, which is just south of Dublin. That included hiking in fairly touristy Glendalough (Irish for “valley of two lakes”) — but which is also quite popular among locals — and then back up the east coast to Dublin.
The photo above was taken in the harbour of Arklow, a little coastal town. There were loads of boats rusting away in the sun, next to some big signs complaining about how the EU ruined the lives of Irish fishermen. While there is some truth to it, some of them were also rather populist in nature. But anyway, I tried to make this shot as simple and organised as possible. Keep the fairly geometric shapes as neatly organised, with not too many in the frame, but still enough to make it interesting.
Here are the rest of the photos from the day.
| Focal length: | 55 mm |
| Aperture: | ƒ/9.0 |
| Exposure: | 1/250 s |
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Posted at 9:37

Planned months in ahead to ensure that everybody would be there, today was the day for the group picture of my colleagues from the Systems Biology group here at the Hamilton. Of course, not everyone was there, but that missing person will be edited into the picture (if all goes well) at the top right.
As the weather report promised, the weather wasn’t going to play along nicely; in typical Irish fashion it was, in fact, bucketing down. Hence, the picture had to be taken inside. But that was a wonderful opportunity to get a slightly more interesting shot as compared to the standard, boring group photos outside in front of the institute’s logo.
So I got everyone to come into the seminar room where I had put up a chair on a table so that I could be high up above everyone. After arranging them according to their height, I asked everyone to bunch in as much as possible (the number one tip for group shots!) and shot with a wide angle focal length down on them, bouncing the flash off the ceiling. The picture turned out exactly how I had pre-visualised it this morning, brushing my teeth.
Again, for group photos you 1) want to get people as close as possible together (almost uncomfortably close in real life, but it won’t look like it on the photo!). This not only makes the group look more like a group rather than loosely assemble individuals, but also adds a small bit of fun to the whole action. 2) you want to tell people clearly and explicitly to look directly into the camera, and nowhere else. If there are other people around you, send them away, or people will inevitably get distracted and not look into the camera. 3) take at least (!) three photos or more, because you will always have someone with eyes closed at the exact moment you release the shutter. Having several photos allows you then to clone some pairs of eyes between photos so that everyone can have theirs open in the final image :-)
| Focal length: | 24 mm |
| Aperture: | ƒ/4.0 |
| Exposure: | 1/25 s + flash |
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Posted at 17:58

On a recent trip back home I’ve spent a few hours digging through my boxes in the cellar, which hold loads of old stuff, memories, dust-catchers, etc. One of the things I brought back was a few DVDs with some older photos (i.e. pre-2007), so that I could put them on my photo hard-disk (as well as backup) so I can access them more directly. Et voilà, here’s one from my trip to Iceland back in 2005.
It was taken next to the Perlan, on a little hill in Reykjavík, just after sunset. And the lesson of the day is: Look for silhouettes! When your background has wonderful, intense colours, or it is simply much brighter than your foreground, expose for the background and dial up the blacks in the picture to remove as much definition from the foreground as possible.
As shown here, this works particularly well for sunsets.
For the curious, here are some more photos and background information on that trip to Iceland.
| Focal length: | 19.7 mm (≈96 mm) |
| Aperture: | ƒ/3.5 |
| Exposure: | 1/100 s |
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Posted at 17:22

So you’ve got all those pretty pictures from your past vacations, your last hike, that picnic with your beloved one in a park or that snap of some dark, dirty, gritty side street of Dublin. What do you do with it? Well, you leave it to catch digital dust on your hard drive. Or, if you’re really nice, you’ve made some small 6×4 prints at the chemist and sent them to your dad.
But what then? Every time I hold a print of one of my pictures in my hands, I think: Gosh, it’s so much different compared to the screen… so much better! I guess there are a number of obvious reasons for that, but I’m sure you’ve also made the experience that a “physical” copy of a photo just adds so much more to it, compared to seeing it displayed on your screen (even if it’s a 24″ monster).
I’ve just spent an hour hanging 10 of my favourite pictures up at our place, which I’ve mounted on some reasonably priced A3 passe-partouts from eBay. And guess what: All the money and effort getting the high quality prints, the tinkering with the card board and last but not least the tedious hanging (getting them straight, equally spaced, at equal heights) was definitely worth it.
So go ahead, make prints of your best photos, mount them and completely rediscover them in their new incarnation!
PS: Here’s the seller’s shop listing where I bought the mounting equipment: You’ll need picture mounts, mounting boards and ideally some acid-free tape to mount the pictures properly and them frame them. If you don’t want to frame, you can just glue the stuff together, like I did.
| Focal length: | 85 mm |
| Aperture: | ƒ/1.4 |
| Exposure: | 1/125 s |
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Posted at 19:06

Here’s the last photo (in this series at least) from our recent Barcelona trip. I took it under one of the viaducts in the Park Güell. This park has also been designed by Antoni Gaudí (the masterminds behind the Sagrada Familia) and it features the famous, colourful serpentine benches you may have seen in L’Auberge Espagnole.
Although the weather’s not been the best when were there (a bit of the shame, as the place is is covered with colourful mosaics which obviously work best in direct sunshine) we did spent a good amount of time there just wandering around and admiring the crazy /organic features and shapes all around.
The photo above shows one of the viaducts; a great place to hang out when it’s raining ;-) There was not much point in leaving it in colour, as shapes and the interplay of light and shadow are much more prominent in monochrome. Motivated by Jeff Curto’s wonderful Camera Position podcast (and, for instance, this or this episode), I paid particular attention to the precise position from where I took the camera.
At the time, I was consciously trying to achieve to things: (roughly) balance lights and darks, as well as nicely guide the eye through the picture. As we’re naturally attracted to the bright parts, here our eye will start in the top left (generally a popular point to start reading a picture anyway, at least in Western cultures). It should the continue down along the stairs anticlockwise to come underneath the viaduct and follow along the walking direction of the people towards those beautiful arches. Note also the dark elements at the corners of the frame which help to keep the eyes inside the picture. Also, some amount of patience was required for this shot, as the other people walking around were not always where I would have loved them to be …
But overall, I really like this picture, and it’s definitely going to be hung up next time I get some pictures printed.
| Focal length: | 17 mm |
| Aperture: | ƒ/9.0 |
| Exposure: | 1/13 s |
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Posted at 14:50
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