Generally I haven’t been a fan of audio-visual slide shows.  I remember when I used to work in a ‘cube farm’ in the old Motorola days and browsed to a site which automatically launched an audio-visual show: it brought on panic as I desperately tried to turn off the sound before my cube-buddies realised I was surfing instead of working.

Nevertheless,  I recently had the honour of being asked to talk to Mallow Camera Club for an evening and I thought a slide show might help to keep everyone awake.

This is from a session last autumn.  It has a soundtrack so if you work in an open plan office, turn off the sound before you start!

Apologies to Daire (aka John) for the unfortunate timing of one particular lyric

The Irish Anaphylaxis Campaign are holding a ‘Woman Wellbeing and Wardrobe evening’ this Friday, 29th January at the Radison Little Island, starting at 8pm.  The charity supports families living with life threatening allergies.  Tickets are €10.

I’ll have a stand there and I’m also doing their publicity photos so if you’re attending, please come over and say ‘Hi’.

I will have family session vouchers available at the stand and as part of the fundraiser I’ll be donating 10% of all sales on the night to the IAC.

My apologies to anyone who has come to the site looking for pictures of the Christmas Pageant.

In order to respect the privacy of the families involved in the Pageant, the photographs are only available on a private gallery and are not posted to the public site.

If you are a parent at the school and you’d like access to the gallery, please e-mail me stating how you’re related to whom at OLOL and I’ll send you back the link.

rob@roblambphoto.com

Once again, sorry if this is confusing.  This arrangement was made with the school with the interests of the children at heart.

Please call if there are any problems: 087 683 8511

London through a plastic lens

I’m still catching up from an extended weekend trip to London for the Society  of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP) Convention.  It is a big do: Trade Fair; hours and hours of seminars and classes; even a black tie awards night. 1000’s of photographers from across Europe attended.

Careful choice and self-control allowed me to get some really useful stuff without being totally overwhelmed.  When my head did start to get full I headed to Hammersmith tube to re-acquaint myself with London.

It’s hard to believe that it has been over 10 years since I did anything more than travel through London.  A lot has changed for me (and London) since then and I took the opportunity to get away from talk of cameras, lighting and endless wedding albums to actually see some inspirational pictures.

On the list were: the National Portrait Gallery (including two temporary exhibitions of photographic portraits), a Norman Parkinson exhibition at Somerset House, the Courtauld Gallery and the Photographer’s Gallery.  Some great pictures there - lots to think about.

Now the Photographer’s Gallery was an old favourite when we lived near London (although it has moved since).  Often the exhibitions were far too Arty for me and again this was the case.  It always had a good coffee shop and a great book shop and that hasn’t changed either.

It was there I found the Mini Diana.  I have been aware of the whole Lomography / Holga cult thing for a while.  Basically it seems to be a reaction to the uber-technical side of photography: the multi-mega-pixel, lens envying hell that it can be at times.  Take a cheap, crappy, 95% plastic camera and have some fun.  Be creative.  Take some photographs.

My original interest was in the 120, Medium Format versions - an easy way to start using big negs.  But it seems hard to get 120 processed and impossible to get it scanned these days so I settled for the Mini: a square or half frame image on 35mm film; two settings; crude manual focus; plastic 24mm lens.

Maybe in my small part I was reacting to being in High-Tech Heaven for four days.  I do like the technical aspect of photography but I guess the engineer in me always seeks an application for good technology.  Too much technology without any discussion about what it can do for me gets on my nerves.

So I bought the Mini Diana, a roll of film and set off on a beautiful winter’s afternoon to walk from Oxford Street to Embankment (via Picadilly and St James Park) to give it a spin.

I had so much fun.  And after I found it was originally set in ‘Night’ mode I even got some usable pictures out of it.

So lots to think about from the SWPP: Marketing Plans write, technique to hone and gadgets to play with.  But I also need to buy another film for the Mini Diana.

I wish everyone a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

No doubt Jan 2010 will be tough for many but I wish you the gifts of hope, trust and self-belief.  Treasure the people who love you and draw strength from them.

Merry Christmas to everyone from all at Rob Lamb Photography

May you have a joyful and restful Christmas and a prosperous New Year

OK, so the water is back, we’re not smelly any more.

In fact our proximity to St Finbarr’s Hospital probably brought it back to us quicker than most - although I was informed we were ‘borrowing’ our water from Rochestown.  What was frustrating was not really knowing whether we could trust it as drinking water or not.  Finally, in a total auto-pilot moment, I brushed my teeth with the tap water and slowly kind of started to use it from there.

However the small fella is still turning on the bathroom tap and saying ‘it’s working!’ - he doesn’t forget too easily.

I haven’t yet gone as far as emptying the water butt.  You just don’t know when you might need 132 litres of rain water…

The Butt Stops

1960s Morris MG 1110 by Matchbox

My Dad did a turn out a while ago and arrived with a small selection of my old toy cars.  Now I’m not convinced, given that this is a 1960’s car, that this was actually originally mine (sorry sis) but I do remember it well because of the driver and the dog in the back.  Some of the scars on it are certainly my doing.

So this little Matchbox Morris is probably over 40 years old, has survived at least two of my family and is now in the hands of my small fella.  And the dog is still faithfully looking out of the back window.

They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

I did a quick search for the Morris MG 1100 and came up with this site.  Isn’t the Internet an amazing thing?

I make no secret of the fact that I have no formal training in art.  I have never called myself an Artist - although I do remember having some pretty esoteric discussions about elegant software design!

My journey in photography has brought me into contact with Photographers who do consider themselves Artists, Photographers who have no interest in an association with art and Artists who take photographs.  Some of their work I can relate to and others just kind of stuns me (in an underwhelming way).

I’m trying to ‘get it’.  I am.  With the help of posts like ‘Anyone could paint that’ and 7 other myths about art maybe one day I will be able to get there (and then increase my print prices accordingly)

I met a few people yesterday that told me about Monday’s Joe Duffy programme.  I didn’t hear it myself but the gist seems to be that a photography studio was doing a promotion in a Shopping Centre where passers-by were able to ‘win’ a voucher for the studio for a session and an 8×10 ‘worth around €300′.  Someone contacted Joe because apparently almost everyone that entered the competition won the voucher.

These vouchers / prizes / teasers generally have one purpose: to get customers into a studio.  The objective is to get the photos done, present the ‘free’ or ‘won’ image, make it look pathetically small and then generally the studio aggressively up-sell.  I have spoken to a number of people who have gone in with their voucher expecting to get something for free and walking out having spent many hundreds of euro.

Now I have to say that most of them have some very nice photographs for their money.  Almost all of them are very happy with their photographs.  But few of them had really thought about spending upwards of €1000 on a large wall hanging before they got the voucher.

My issue is that this is a classic cold hard sell.  It starts with a trip to a shops and ends with spending a lot of money on photographs (albeit lovely photographs).  There is no point where the consumer gets to make a value judgement based on suitability, quality or value.

No one I spoke to heard the end of Joe’s programme and it doesn’t appear to be available on RTE anywhere but there is nothing new about this style of marketing and I suspect it doesn’t break any rules.  It is just a pretty aggressive way of selling photographs.  It tends to rely heavily on emotional blackmail and implied guilt.  How could you not want to get beautiful photos of your family? How could you put a price on those memories?

Photographs of your family are special.  The memories they create are very precious.  Their value stretches way beyond what you can expect to pay.  I don’t believe that a hard sell of this nature is appropriate.

So next time you come across someone offering you something free in a Shopping Centre.  Remember that they are paying a few hundred euro for a spot in the Centre, the wages of the person talking to you (who isn’t a photographer) and also for all that marketing material they are showing you.  And then they’re offering you something for free.  This is not a charitable gesture.  There is some way they are expecting to profit and they intend to get it out of you.

You may be able to get something for nothing.  I would however expect that overall you would get better value from someone who isn’t having to cover all those overheads. As for the value of the prize, I doubt even the studio concerned would actually charge you €300 for a session and a 8×10 if you walked in off the street.  IMHO that’s a lot.  There are a lot of very good photographers charging a lot less.

If you want to have a professional portrait session, I would highly recommend choosing a photographer because you like the style of their work, you have heard good things about their level of service and they charge a fair price, rather than just because they approached you while you were shopping for something else.

As I have said, I didn’t hear the programme.  I’m sorry if I have the wrong end of the stick.  My comments and opinions are based on the experiences of a number of friends and clients who have received vouchers from a number of different studios in Ireland and UK.