Sold My First License

 

Samuel Beckett Bridge and Convention Centre, Dublin  .

Nearly a year to the day since I started shooting with my DSLR and I sold my first license. It all came about in an unexpected way. I have many photos on flickr and I recieved a flickr mail from a website designer in Cork who was looking for an image of the Samuel Beckett bridge in Dublin. We emailed back and forth for a few days working out a price based on how the image would be used etc. This was a really new thing for me so I consulted websites including Getty (which suprisingly has no images of the Beckett bridge) and Current Photographer and I'm still not sure if I priced appropriately.

Yesterday the cheque arrived and the photo is now up on the 'Franc in the city' website. I was amazed at how easy the whole process was and of course was very chuffed to have my photo selected and used. The whole event really highlighted the importance of keywording all your photos so they can be found. Now I must finished tagging all my smugmug photos.

Story of the shot - Frog Reflections

Frog Reflections

One of the most common pieces of advice I hear and read to get better photos is to change the angle. Reach high, get down low, don't just shoot from eye level. That piece of advice ran through my head as I visualised this shot. I was walking through my girlfriends garden when I noticed two frogs in the pond. They seemed to be resting and as I watched they didn't move at all. The view gave me the impression of old Roman statesmen relaxing in the bathes contemplating affairs of state. I took a few shots of the frogs but wasn't overly happy with them. 

So I grabbed my long lens, my 55-200 and lay flat on my stomach beside the pond. I tried to steady myself as much as possible and fired off a few shots handheld. A few came out and in others the focus plain shifted so that plants and not the frogs head that was in focus. When I loaded the image onto my laptop I was delighted to see that the frogs reflection had been preserved and I feel like that contemplative mood I picked upon from the scene was preserved in the photo. A little cropping and sharpening in Aperture and this is the final image. 

Changing the angle gave me the photo that I wanted and it's something I always try to remember when visualising a shot now. 

You can view this photo on flickr too.

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World Aids Day

The 1st of December 2010 is World Aids Day. A day to raise awareness of an affliction which affects over 33 million people globally. To mark the event a number of world landmarks are to be lit up with red lights. Here in Dublin, the new convention centre changed its usual rainbow coloured lights to all red.

Dublin Convention Centre

You can find out more information on World Aids Day here and see the Convention Centre when it first opened here.

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