A TRUE VIEW

If you have stopped here before you may remember I was interviewed by a roving american reporter by the name of Andy Jordan.
Andy works for the Wall Street Journal online edition,and recently he took a tour of Europe to make a series of short films about the current European economic depression.
Last week he published the firs of these reports, a piece on Spain online click here to see it.
In the course of our interview we talked about my current leaving dublin project and how it relates to the current economic situation.Whilst here he also talked to trinity college economists the minister for finance,and amongst others, one of my portrait subject Bernard Tyeres.
After this experience my hopes are manifold.They are as follows
1 I make it past the first edit.
2.I did not misrepresent myself as a result of nerves
3.My images are used to illustrate the piece.and
4. my work receives a boost in traffic and this results in benefits including new work!!

 In preparation for this I have put together a view book site.
Its meant to be an online portfolio and I am hoping to use it as a bounce along with this blog.
The aim I suppose is to give readers a little bit more depth, and a way for me to show the purely visual side to work without all the text that comes with the blog.click here or on the main title above to access the site and enjoy.The shot above is featured on the site in a gallery called type 55.
Myself Artur,Brian,and Hugh were out on the street again last tuesday,but editing is slow due to work load.
I hope to post the final image over the weekend.
please comment on the site and let me know if there are weaknesses and /or strenghts

OH it all helps!! believe me!

thanks david

ANY PORT IN A STORM!!

There is no doubt about it this country definitely shut down over two years ago.
Most in business believed it was a short term thing and all would be good again pretty soon.
But hey you and me, the guys trying to make it on a weekly basis, the fellow operating without a salary,
we know more than the average Bank or state employee about the real state of the economy.
For the moment its peaks and troughs all the time(or as the Dude put it gutters and strikes).
You just dont know what any given week is going to throw at you.
When the building boom finally stopped Lynn Murphy found herself out of work and moved to Australia.
She has been there for 18 months now and has found a life.
She returned to Dublin some weeks ago for a friends wedding and she found herself reflecting on the past life she had here.

Here is what she had to say

"I was home for a wedding of a good friend from school, the visit was long overdue. It has been an odd few weeks being back, cathartic in some ways as I was able to see for myself everything that is going on - as opposed to just hearing about the tales of horror from friends and family and the papers. In other ways though it has renewed my love for my home city - its beauty, the friendliness of the people, how they keep on kicking never losing their sense of humour despite all the doom and gloom. The visit has also been good as it has confirmed for me that I know I made the right decision in leaving. The experiences I have had since I left have for the most part only been positive - travel broadening the mind and all that malarkey. I know how lucky I am to be living in such a beautiful place as Sydney. And as I said the other night being away has made me appreciate what I have at home - great friends and a wonderful family. No matter where I live, Dublin will always be my home.

I was working for the interior design store Haus in Temple Bar, it came to an end as it was just no longer possible to keep trading once the market went dead. Now, in Oz, I'm working for a similar company that carries alot of the same product but operates on a much bigger scale and the experience to date has only been positive. Professionally it has been fantastic to see variations between different consumer markets - how companies treat the same product so very differently."

She misses Dublin dearly! a feeling I believe that is shared by all the others I have photographed so far.
There is one and only one common thing that holds all of these people together and that is given the opportunity,and circumstances being right to provide them with what they needed,they would all willingly stay in this our great little town,Dublin.
It has always been my intention to show our city as a central part of this project ,and so far I think this has been the case and long may it continue.
I wish the best to Lynn in the future and I really hope she makes it back to Dublin if that is where she needs to be.But for the meantime Sydney beckons,and by now she has most likely left,and that could,but for the odd wedding,be for good!!
Artur Sikora,and Gemma Geraghty helped to reveal the beauty of Dun Laoighre harbour ,Its beauty like this that will hold us together.
It hurts me to think of Sean Fitzpatricks hidden €100 million loans,and how this and all the other hidden black business has left the ordinary citizen of Ireland Paying and Paralyzed unable to eject those clinging to the charred reigns of power.But Hey we have got to realise that some day maybe soon the dominoes will start to topple in our own Dáil and Ironically it might be someone like Michael Lowry who leads the revolt.
Big thanks again to Lynn and to Louise o Connor for alerting her to this project.Please keep looking and alerting friends on the move to this project I really want it to get BIG.
please use twitter ,facebook and the sociable tabs on the left to publicise this blog

SHOT ON SUNDAY GONE BY THURSDAY

Slowly but surely this blog is drawing people in,people from all over the world.
The reason for this seems to be recommendation.
So I would ask you now at the top of this post,if you like what you see please use the sociable tab
to tweet or share this url on facebook or any other services.
Today I had one hundred referrals out of nowhere after someone from RTE tweeted this url.
On Saturday last I was visited by wall street journal (online) video journalist
who is touring europe making a series of reports about the economic recession.
He had been referred to my blog by the good people over at globalirish.ie.
although his motive was to find and interview a person in mortgage difficulty he spent over an hour filming an interview with me about my leaving dublin project and the people I had met in the last 7 months.
SO heres hoping I make it through the edit,and if I do I am visually well presented!

Last sunday I had the pleasure of making work in the centre of town with with a young Chinese lady
who is about to leave this country.

She was a close neighbor of mine and I watched her mother tend to her baby daughter in the local park or near to her house.
Her name is Ruochon Guan And she is returning to China after 9 years in Dublin.
Her young child who is a year and a half old moved back ahead of her last april with her grandmother.
Needles to say she can't wait to hold her again,and although she will miss Dublin town nothing will take from the joy of this reunion.
We wish her a happy flight and it was Indeed a pleasure working with this gentle person.
Hugh,and Artur lit up the scene whilst Gemma Geraghty filled with a little metz.
Big thanks to you all and a special thanks to Ruochon Guan
I have 3 shots lined up for the next 2 weeks so it looks like this project is heating up.
Its really holding my interest and I hope its working for all of you.
last week I also contacted by Email those photographers who expressed an interest in my type 55 polaroid project so watch this space for further developments.
Please comment as it will help shape my destiny!!(and content)

LOVE IT, HATE IT,SOME DAY YOU MUST LEAVE IT!

Wow,what a busy week that was.
There is no doubt that most of the population wished they where leaving Dublin this week
after the babblings of our Taoiseach.
What a guy!!
but he wont go away without a big sloppy fight,thats for sure!!
For me it was 4 trips to the 40 foot in Sandycove, Dublin,to case the scene for our latest caper.
Leaving us was Bernard Tyeres, A telecoms expert on his way to better things in London.
Let us wish him well!
this is some of what he had to say about leaving Dublin.

"I'll miss the good things about

Dublin (tasty Guinness, rashers, sausages, the 40ft Foot), but it's time to

experience some more of the world.

There are plenty of things I won't miss, but overtime I'm sure I'll forget them.

I'll be sad to be moving a little further away from my family, but in the world of

modern communications, I will probably be closer in some ways. And London

is only 50 minutes on a plane.

For me I have always had a love/hate relationship

with Dublin. When I wasn't here, I enjoyed coming back, when I was here, I

always enjoyed leaving.

Dublin has changed immensely in the past 11 years, in some ways good,

(walk down Grafton street and listen to the languages spoken, more cultural

differences, a change in mentality),and alot of ways bad (ridiculous property

developments, the whole Celtic tiger “I deserve it” mentality, living on credit,

terrible wastage of public monies, politicians continuing with the small-minded

attitudes), but it still has along way to go."

The 40 ft is surely one of the most magical locations used so far on this project.

The constant stream of air craft on flight path to dublin airport,

the ferries arriving and departing,

the bailey lighthouse flashing you every minute,

all of these things are screamiing for your attention,

but very quickly you are absorbed into the the environment and you loose your self in the beauty of this ancient secluded bathing place.

Whilst there I met fellow photographer Barry Delaney see his work here

Artur,and Brian again played a stormer,with Louise Roden coming along out of curiosity!

Don Sheehan helped put the final part of this work together.

To all of them, Bernard included, I am very grateful.

Big thanks Again to Noreen Bowden of Global Irish who has helped to shine a light on this blog and especially the Leaving Dublin project.

Thanks also to Darragh Shanahan for the lead on this one.

And Finally, lets hope Mr Cowan finds his way home!!

Please use the sociable buttons on the left to share tis content with your friends.

Thanks

David

SPINNING THE DISK!!

Some time ago I alluded to a technical problem I was having re data storage and archiving.
Discs break down,they go faulty,you have to pay data recovery guys a small fortune to recover your stuff.
but all is not lost when its lost!!
Number one there is data rescue iii.now thats good for starters!!
Then there is a hard drive docking station,an invaluable device which allows you to mount an internal hard disk as an external device.
If you are buying an external drive please buy a unit which has a single drive inside.
If this goes faulty its most likely going to be the interface thats fried ,so you can break the case open and pop it into your docking station.
If its a unit with more than one drive
your fried electronics are the glue that holds this together as one device on your desktop and you cant
recover the drive unless you buy the same controller circuit(messy)
Raids,multiple disc arrays,are all the rage right now but with the advent of solid state drives we will all be changing our storage over in the next few years.
So right now we need a cheap and safe way of storing our data until the time comes to migrate it to the next standard.
my solution is the following.

Use Adobe lightroom as your file management system.

Store your files in one location on your home computer(a second internal 1tb or 500gb disc)

As a further backup plan you could also use a program such as disk tracker to record the contents of your disks for lightroom independent search purposes.

When the disk is full remove it from your machine.

clone the removed disc using a device such as the Integral copy station box it and label it and place it on a shelf.(Storing the copy in a safe location)

Install a fresh empty disk Name it and start over again following the same process.

If you need to revisit your archive to access a file Lightroom will tell you what disk the the file is on.
you then simply mount that disc in your desktop dock and hey presto you have access!!

With a1tb drive costing something like €60 this form of data archiving is pretty cheap relative to external raid devices,or other Archiving methods like the drobo or gtech gspeed.

To soften the blow of this techie posting I have included a beautiful picture from 1996 shot in a Dublin national school.
Its a shot of a simpler time when all photographic images could be put in a little sleeve and housed in a book.Again it shows the bravery of children when confronted with the unknown(in this case me!!)

It was shot on film,neopan 400 rated at 800 and processed in microphen.

the camera was a mamiya RZ using a wide angle lens(me and the subject were at fairly close quarters)

oh happier simpler days!!

To all my friends wishing to join me in the type 55 project now is the time to make your choices of images and to mail me your low res versions so I can see if we have a show(my gut feeling is we will have two!!)
get me at dmon@me.com for this!!

I am back on the streets of Dublin next week for another Leaving dublin shot, so lets go!!
please use the sociable button on the left to share via facebook,twitter,and stumbleupon

MOVING QUICKLY

Some days life throws you a ball and you have to run with it.

Up till now most of the "leaving Dublin" process has taken at least a week to a week and a half to get together. The final work really benefits from the process of planning and consultation with the sitter.

last weekend however,I picked up a lead form the Gallery of photography facebook page and followed it on to find that the persons involved where away for the weekend and leaving for Australia(via south Africa) two days after they returned to dublin.

So thanks to mobile phone email and facebook contact I was able to chat to Rae about location,

scout it on sat,post pics on monday,and make a decision that nigh on a location.

Last evening We met for the first time at the Suir rd luas stop on the Grand Canal.

Rae Green and Her husband,Clay Crighten are heading back to clay's home town of Rockhampton Australia,stopping off at South Africa for 5 weeks along the way,for one last adventure.Then Its back to find a new home and try to build a quality life.The type that is difficult to carve out in a slowly stagnating Ireland at the moment!

Good luck and good fortune to you both It was a pleasure to work with you on your last assignment before the flight!!

Techniccally we took a slightly different tack than usual because of the location.

we used on snooted bowens light as our main light, a barn doored (improvised by Brian and Artur) pair of metz 45's from behind to give depth to the sitters(you gan see some higlights on clay's neck and Rae's cheek,they are subtle yet significant).

All this was combined with a shutter speed of 1 second to allow some burn in from the ambient lights.

then we added some small sharp details from a 10 second exposure for a little more depth.

After the final edit a bleach bypass filter set to 30% opacity was applied on a layer.SO THERE!!

As always Artur Sikora,and Brian daly took it all in their stride And Hugh Mc Cabe Arrived ahead of us to welcome Ray and Clay on set.

A BIG THANKS TO ALL

PLEASE COMMENT AND USE THE SOCIABLE BUTTONS OVER ON THE RIGHT

HAVE A CHAIR!!

A REFLECTION ON THE SUMMER

Summer 2010 is not quite over yet, but its end has been signaled to me!

On Saturday last I arrived home from France after a two and a half week visit I was totally relaxed after a wonderful stress free time.

With only one week of the childrens summer holidays remaining I have set my self the goal

of completing several housekeeping tasks to set myself up to go at it again with renewed vigour!

I finally came up with a plan for cost effective data back-up which I must now implement

(more about this on completion)

I Need to finally take down the Dadofoto website and replace it with a David Monahan one.

I must physically tidy up my workspace after a hectic july.

And once more slap some order on my life.

I am quite delighted how things went this summer and it looks like things will be better next year for all involved in this fragile province of the photographic world.

The photoIreland festival has pledged itself to educate the Irish to understand and appreciate,the role of photography in our society.

Personally I was heartened to see some great works during its early july schedule

and I feel they will help to elevate photography to a similar level of appreciation it receives in other countries.

For Me the highlights of the summer where as follows,

The fantastic home exhibition in North great Georges street.

The Healthy and stimulating debates and discussions around the photoireland festival.

The fact that I was hired by the photographic archive to print their next exhibition(launching next week).

Getting three shots done in july for the Leaving Dublin series

The success of two of Students I had the pleasure of working with this year.

two of them Jeanete Lowe and Tom Scott made it into the R.H.A. summer show.

And to cap it all Jeanette then goes and gets into the London National Portrait Galleries,Taylor wessing prize show. Well done to you both!!

The fantastic series shot by Matthew Thompson for ulster bank, dublin theatre festival,pure magic!!

All of the above have done a lot to renew and elevate my enthusiasm for photography

so thanks to you all!!

So,now that I am home I have completed my postcard site of holiday photography.

As an added treat for those interested I have included a chronologically sequenced set on another page to counter the random splash effect of the postcard site,click here to go there.

and please tell me which works best for you!

Thank you for taking a seat and reading this post.Incidentally the chair above is part of my summer gallery,I bought two of these pink formica topped beauties and a table for €10 at the amazing Emmaus community warehouse in St Brieuc

please comment and use the sociable buttons on the right to share this content with your friends!!