Belfast Culture Night is held in September each year. It is difficult to connect the current Belfast of Culture Night and crowded bars and restaurants with the dark days during “The Troubles” when after about 7 o’clock the city was deserted.
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I’ve mentioned before that I nearly always carry my Fuji camera now and these are just a few photographs from a walk in Belfast. Prior to getting this small camera I usually wouldn’t have had a camera with me, other than my mobile phone of course, unless I was going somewhere to specifically take photographs. These images will probably not be used but having a camera with me nearly all the time has made me much more productive than I thought it would.
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These are the Terracotta Warriors that have been in the grounds of the City Hall for the past couple of weeks. Some were painted by local artists but others were left for visitors to do. I’m told they are going on a tour of Northern Ireland over the next few months.
These locks are on the Lagan Footbridge and are multiplying steadily. I saw a photograph recently of a bridge in Paris covered in padlocks and I think there was something on the news in the last month or two about locks being removed from the Ha’penny Bridge in Dublin. There was concern that they might damage the structure which is protected. Hopefully the Lagan Locks will be allowed to stay.
I haven’t actually been in the Belfast Barge yet but I intend to put that right over the next week or so.
The World Police and Fire Games are being hosted in Northern Ireland and run from 1st to 10th August. This is the first time the Games have been held in the United Kingdom and about 6700 athletes have entered with events being held at various venues throughout the province.
I am old enough to remember Belfast during “The Troubles” at their height and it is difficult to believe that city has been transformed into this new vibrant Belfast.
These photographs are from the Triathlon held on Sunday 4 August 2013.
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We don’t often get temperatures in the high twenties in Northern Ireland. It has certainly been three or four years since we had what comes near to what you could describe as warm weather and a friend’s seven year old daughter tells me that the last time we had weather like this was 2006, the year she was born. Regardless – three, four or seven years – when it happens people are out to take full advantage of it.
These photographs were taken at lunch time in the grounds of Belfast City Hall.
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I don’t often mention the equipment I use to take photographs as I think we can sometimes spend too much time discussing the gear we use rather than the actual images we take. It has been said that the best camera is the one you have with you when the image presents itself and for most people the camera they have with them will be in their mobile phone. Today’s smartphones will easily produce images of sufficient quality for Facebook, blogs and screen display and this is all that most people will need.
I hope to sell some of my images and that means getting the best quality I can so I nearly always have a camera with me – and I take a lot of photographs.
SLR cameras, even the small ones, are too bulky and heavy to carry when you’re doing something other than taking photographs and my favourite carry around camera of the moment is a Fuji X100. The X100 looks like a rangefinder camera and caused a bit of a stir when it first went on sale because of its retro styling. First users complained of problems with focusing and ease of access to some functions among other things but firmware updates have cured not all, but most of these early difficulties. About a month after I got mine I had to return it to Fuji for repair as the aperture blades were sticking. A quick search on Google revealed and I was not alone in experiencing this fault. Over time I have become used to the camera’s ways. It has a prime lens so when I want to zoom in I have to walk closer and I have found this encourages more thought when creating an image. I have to work that bit harder and push myself that bit more.
These images of Saint Anne’s Square, Belfast were taken with the X100. Saint Anne’s Square is directly behind Saint Anne’s Cathedral and there are a couple of restaurants, The MAC is there and probably other things I don’t know about. It’s one of those areas in Belfast that can be ideal for taking portraits and while I was taking these images there was a photographer there shooting a model.
While preparing these photographs I’ve found that I tend to produce more images from the Fuji in black and white than I would expect. I can’t explain why this is but now that I’m aware of it I’ll have to come up with some theory for a future post.
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