Invasion of the Lamp Post Sock Monsters

I noticed this ‘thing’ on the crossing of the South Mall by Parliament Bridge a few weeks ago.  I found it amazing.  I suspect that the great majority of people pass by and don’t even notice it but on closer inspection it is a truely wonderful creation.  What’s more it must have been sewn on to the traffic light post since there’s no other way that it could have been attached.

Who is responsible?
Who is responsible?

Now I know a professional photographer should always have his camera with him but sometimes one just wants to do a bit of shopping so it took me a week or so to get back into town with my camera which is a shame because orginally it had an eye.

Sometime camera phones are useful!
Sometimes camera phones are useful!

I think this is great.  Hat’s off to the Secret Knitter who ‘posted’ this one and may there be a few more entertaining pieces of street art appearing around Cork City.

I’m left with the vision of someone stitching on the South Mall in the middle of the night with a few taxi drivers driving past wondering what on earth is going on!

Cork Cancer Research Centre Charity Christmas Cards

Some of my photos from the launch of Cork Cancer Research Centre’s 2008 Christmas Card collection are in RSVP this week.

Six original designs were donated by local artist Fiona Turley and CCRC launched the cards at Fiona’s Gallery just outside Fermoy recently.

The cards are gorgeous and of course all proceeds go to the Cork Cancer Research Centre.  As well as Fiona’s gallery I’m told they’re available in most local shopping centres so keep an eye out if you’d like some unique Christmas Cards and help support a local charity which is doing great work in an area that affects pretty much all of us at some time in our lives.

Puddleducks

Some of the photos I did for our friends at Puddleducks made it into Sunday’s Irish Mail.  More are expected to be used in ‘Modern Mum’ out on the 22nd November.

Puddleduck’s products are brilliant, we’ve been using their kids waterproofs since Kindergarten and the kids just love them.  I will never forget one day during Junior Infants our kids proudly ran to school in the tipping rain in pink raincoat and leggings.

Doing work for them is also a great opportunity to match my work with kids with their need for great images of kids enjoying their clothing.

We all had a great time shooting these, I’ll let Puddleducks use the more ‘product orientated’ shots but there were lots of really nice ones…

Winter Cometh

Outside today I noticed that Autumn really seems to be nearly over.  Many of the trees that were hanging on to their leaves are now giving up.  Though there are still a few treats out there if you look hard enough…

The Last Days of Cork Docklands

Tuesday night saw the the launch of a new book documenting Cork docklands: ‘The Last Days of Cork Docklands’ by Patrick Cummins.

Now Patrick is my brother-in-law (lets get that out early) but he’s been a professional photographer for over 20 years and I really like his work.  He lives in Syndey but was in Cork for a year with his family last year and saw the opportunity to document this unique part of the city’s identity at a unique time in its history: plans for a multi-million euro regeneration have been published and whatever finally gets built the nature of the area (which has been in steady decline for some time) is set to change forever.

It’s a very worthy project but the photography stands on its own too.  Patrick took the time to get to the heart of the area, the people of its past, its present and its future.

There’s not much more info on the publisher’s site, but there’s been a good bit of press coverage for the launch including some sample photos.

If you’re in a bookstore, take a look for yourself.  Well worth €25

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog!

When someone mentioned having a blog I thought ‘why bother?’.  Then I thought about all the other stuff I do that isn’t on the site.  In particular the many photographs I have of Cork city and county that I take, smile at and then file away.  So why not use a blog to document those unique moments as I come across them on my work (and play) around Cork.

So to kick off, and to give an idea about the kind of thing I’m on about, here’s an image of the inside of Turner’s Cross Church taken a couple of weeks ago late one sunny winter’s afternoon.

I’ve been fascinated by Turner’s Cross church for a while.  Whether or not you actually like it as a building it is remarkable. However photographing it is somewhat of a challenge because its so big and so heavily surrounded by other buildings. So you’re limited to ultra-wide angle lenses, the fisheye or cropped sections of the outer building.

You glimpse bits of it from a number of places around the area and when you end up flying into the airport over the city its the landmark I look for to get my bearings.

Anyway this particular evening I had the chance to go inside, the low sun through the stained glass was quite stunning…

Late winter sun though the stained glass