P is for Photography

Until relatively recently, I would never have used the word ‘creative’ to describe myself. That changed during the summer of 2011 – a time during which stress and pressure caught up with me, mentally more than physically. I needed to take my mind off things and off myself. I felt the need to do something new and different. With some encouragement from my wife – a lifelong enthusiast of photography – I decided to try my hand with the only camera I possessed – my iPhone!

During the summer, as I travelled around Ireland and, closer to home, around Co. Wicklow, I took photos which I felt represented the beauty and character of the places I visited. At the end of the summer I compiled two photo-books (“Ireland by iPhone” and “iPhone Home”) using the best of the photos I had taken combined with brief words about the shots.

And that was it – hooked - so much so that I decided to acquire my first ‘proper’ camera that autumn. I was still a little scared of the ‘big’ cameras so I settled for a ‘little’ one but one which allowed me to take some control. I haven’t looked back since. I would be considered quite an observant person but until I took up a camera I didn’t realise just how much I was missing. I literally began to see the world with new eyes, looking for angles and opportunities that would be interesting to capture.

My ‘day job’ calls for quite an analytical approach and any ‘creativity’ is very much related to solving business problems. Most of my pastime pursuits, including my other great passion – music – were approached from an analytical rather than creative angle. Photography, however, affords me the opportunity to explore my ‘artistic’ creativity, something that lay dormant in me until now. I’ve also discovered that the process doesn’t begin and end in the camera. The old days of darkroom film processing have given way to computer processing of digital images and that’s something that fascinates me greatly. The creative possibilities are endless.

Photography and the creative process around it have been very good for me, helping me achieve a great balance and perspective in life. To my surprise, it has also enhanced my social life. There are regular meet-ups with local friends who share a love of photography. Additionally, I have found a great affinity between my love of photography and my social networking. I really enjoy connecting with people on Twitter and Facebook and I have found the latter to be an excellent way to connect with people who share a love of photography. Here I must also include Flickr – a kind of social networking site for sharing photos where, during 2012, I undertook a ‘Project 52’ – taking and posting one theme-based photo each week for a year. Through that project I was able to engage with and enjoy the work of many photographers from around the world. Many of them have now become personal contacts on Flickr and some even on Facebook. I’ve since moved on to more projects for 2013 but I’m making time to put the finishing touches to a photo-book of my first ‘52’ journey.

There is a long way to go and many more aspects of photography to be explored. I also feel ready now to move on to a ‘bigger’ camera. I sense it will be a lifelong learning experience but that’s a good thing. It will help me to keep looking outward at the world and the people around me in search of inspiration. I know it is going to be a very exciting and fulfilling part of my life and the great thing is the journey is only beginning!

If you would like to see more examples of my photography, here are some links to my online presence:

Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/johnivory/ - my main online portfolio

500px: 500px.com/jwivory - just starting to build this portfolio

O is for Opportunity Knocks

Do you remember the ITV talent show, very popular in the 60s and 70s, hosted by Hughie Green and featuring the good old ‘clapometer’? Yes, that’s right – Opportunity Knocks – one of the forerunners of today’s multi-million dollar global talent show empires. And yes, unfortunately I remember the show but if you are of a younger age you may need to use Google to figure out to what I am referring.

But don’t worry – that is not the subject of this blog post. I am referring here to the old saying that ‘opportunity knocks but once’. The idiom intends to convey that you usually only get one chance to achieve what you really want to do. It may not seem too pertinent a piece of advice for those of you in your younger years, when your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a blank canvas and you seem to have all the time in the world to colour it with experiences. But believe me, the older you get the more apt this saying becomes. The time for an opportunity to present itself anew is ever decreasing. But let’s not get too morbid!

I have already written during this A-Z Challenge about the opportunity I had recently to start up a community choir in my home town. The timing of this just seemed so right that I could not pass up the chance to take it on and there was certainly no guarantee that the opportunity (or indeed that the absence of a community choir) would be there in the future. So, I decided to ‘go for it’!

That particular example is a rather big one – involvement in a group like a choir, whether as musical director, as a singer or in any other capacity, has the potential to be life-changing and it is certainly changing my life! But opportunities are not always as big or as obvious as that example. Let me tell you about a couple of smaller opportunities that came my way in the past year that I could have passed up but am delighted that I did not.

Last summer, the Tall Ships race paid a return visit to Dublin. I drink coffee with friends every Saturday morning and the owner of the coffee shop where we meet knows that some of us are into photography. He himself is owner of a yacht and he kindly invited a couple of us to join him, with our cameras of course, on a trip into Dublin Bay for the departure of the Tall Ships. I knew this was an opportunity highly unlikely to occur again so I said ‘yes’ and the next day had one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. The weather was fantastic; the ships were resplendent as they embarked from the quays of the River Liffey and approached us as we waited out in the bay. As soon as they hit more open waters, they raised their sails. We set our own sails and raced alongside these splendid vessels as they took their leave of Irish shores. The photos I got that day I will treasure for the rest of my life. Here's another one, with one more at the end of the post:



The second opportunity I want to relate is again pertaining to photography. I got a call a few months ago from our local Arts Club saying they’d had a cancellation for their next monthly Arts Show and would I be interested in doing a presentation on my photography. I was actually a little more nervous about this opportunity than I was about setting sail out into Dublin Bay! Apart from posting my photos online on Facebook and Flickr, I had never really publicly presented my shots before. But I decided to ‘go for it’.

Thankfully, the audience was very warm and welcoming which helped me overcome my trepidation on the night and they were very kind in their reaction to my photos. While this may not seem like a ‘big’ opportunity as such, had I turned down the invitation it may not have come my way again. It turned out to be an important step for me in terms of building up confidence in my own photography (I tend to be my own harshest critic) and in making some new contacts on the local arts scene.

So, a couple of personal examples of how it pays to recognise opportunity when it comes knocking. Now, off to think about tomorrow’s post. It may come as no surprise that, being P, it is about Photography!

Setting Out My Stall for 2013

I’m a bit of a procrastinator by nature – if something can be put off until tomorrow, then generally that’s what I do. This, though, is not to be confused with laziness. I prefer to think of it as prioritisation. I like to prioritise things that interest and stimulate me. In very general terms, if something interests me, then I like to do it now. If something interests me less, then I prefer to put that off until another day. Very often we hear people say they don’t have time to do this or that. In reality what they are saying is – “it is not a priority for me right now”. In other words, they are saying it is not as important as whatever it is they are doing instead of it.

2012 was a good year for me in terms of doing what interests and stimulates me. My passions, as many of you know, are music and photography. Musically, our Folk Group undertook a number of really interesting and successful ventures – the high point of which was a major concert which raised over €5,000 for cancer support services in our locality. Photographically, I took over 8,000 pictures. While most of these were rubbish, they were interspersed by a sufficient number of decent shots to encourage me to keep learning and trying new things.

But what about 2013 – what do I want to achieve this year? Well, in no particular order:

• Finish my edits. Yes, I need to finish off the photo book that I promised I would do with the best shots from 2012. It is 90% complete – and I am definitely procrastinating over the last 10%. Need to fix that! 

• Take more photos. Ok – it might be difficult to take more than 8,000 photos but the key point is to keep shooting. If I’m honest, though, my real aim is to take better photos! 

• Get a new camera. My current camera (my first one, in fact, if you discount the camera in my phone) is a high-end compact. I now feel I am ready to experiment with different lenses and for that I am going to need a D-SLR camera. This is something I can put off for a while as it is important to choose the right camera for me. So no immediate rush to part with hard-earned cash, but it is something I need to do at some stage. 

• Start a new musical challenge. This plan has already been laid and will begin during March. More about that anon. 

• Write more. I started this blog with a view to developing my writing skills and to marry those with my photography. This is definitely something I procrastinated about in 2012. I lost count of the number of times I had an idea for a blog post but didn’t follow through on it. To be honest, writing scares me a little but that’s part of the challenge – to overcome that fear and do it anyway. 

I hope you achieve all that you dream of in 2013. Above all, decide what is important for you, what interests and stimulates you. If you are putting these things off until another day, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate. Life is to too short to procrastinate about what is important to you.

* The photo above is one of the very first I took this year, just after midnight at the New Year’s fireworks on Dun Laoghaire east pier.

Abandoned Ireland

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned (ad nauseum, I hear you say!), I’m taking part in a year-long photographic project called ’52 of 2012’. The idea is to take a theme-based photo each week during 2012. A few weeks ago the given theme was ‘Old, Abandoned, Decaying’.

Now, as a Number Five Enneagram personality type, I tend to do a lot of observing. You see, Fives (sometimes labelled the ‘Investigator’) are alert and curious by nature. The animal totem of the Five is the owl, possessed of wisdom gained through observation and knowledge. I’ll blog about that at a later stage but for now, suffice to say as I increasingly look at things with a photographer’s eye, I’m amazed at how much I was missing all this time! This came home to me especially during the ‘Old, Abandoned, Decaying’ week.

One of the rules of the project is that the photo you submit must be taken during the week of the particular theme. As misfortune would have it, on the Saturday before the ‘Old, Abandoned, Decaying’ week I happened to be travelling to Trim in Co. Meath when I spotted by the roadside a very old, very decaying and clearly very abandoned farm cottage - a perfect subject. I drove past as I realised it would be pointless to stop for a photo of it since I would be unable to use it in the project. But I resolved to research old and abandoned photo opportunities near where I live.

The next day, while weaving my way through Google, I discovered that quite a few amateur photographers in Ireland have a keen interest in abandoned buildings. In particular, I came across a website called Abandoned Ireland – established by Tarquin Blake, author of Abandoned Mansions of Ireland. The website, like the book, features mainly old abandoned buildings of the larger variety (mansions, churches, hospitals, industrial premises, …) although several smaller dwellings are also covered. It is one person’s attempt to record and document our heritage as represented by these buildings before they are gone. There is a link at the end of this post if you want to visit it for yourself.

Through this research, I became quite fascinated by ‘abandoned Ireland’. I found myself increasingly drawn to the smaller dwellings – homes of individuals and families which had long since been vacated and abandoned, left to decay slowly and not always gracefully. I began to think beyond the photo opportunities these presented. Who had lived in these houses and cottages? What kind of people were they? Who walked through the front door or looked out of the long-gone windows. What kind of life did they have? What were the circumstances which led to these homes being abandoned? Where did the people go and what did they leave behind? Did a lonely, sole occupant simply die and the property was not passed on? So many questions which will never be answered.

Finally, the Saturday of ‘Old, Abandoned, Decaying’ week arrived and I still had not taken my photograph for that week. Only one day left to do so. I arose at 6.30am and decided to drive into Dublin. I was sure I would find some decaying urban premises to be my subject. I drove by the abandoned Boland’s Flour Mills at Grand Canal Dock then travelled on to the north quays and down to the docklands area. Some possibilities but nothing that was really shouting at me to photograph it and certainly nothing that had that old-world charm factor!

I drove to the Phoenix Park to find the old Magazine Fort (the existence of which I had not known about until my Googling earlier in the week). I decided that scaling the wall to enter the Fort would be a bit much for me, especially as I didn’t know how difficult it might be to scale back out again! I motored on and marvelled at the early morning deer in the park. Then I remembered – the abandoned farm cottage near Trim.

Twenty minutes later I was standing in a field outside Trim, camera and tripod at the ready and again knew I had found the perfect subject for my shot of the week. The result is at the top of this post. Before I left the location, I took one last walk around the old cottage, pondering the questions that I related above.

Two weeks later we spent a few days in Connemara. As we were driving around looking for the next place to stop for some photos, I was amazed at how many old and abandoned dwellings we passed. Some of the not-so-old ones still had tattered curtains hanging inside the broken and decaying windows. I remarked to myself that I hadn’t seemed to notice many of these dwellings the previous times I drove these roads and I wondered was I less of a Five personality than the Enneagram had told me. Rather than dwell too much on that, I decided just to be thankful that due to photography my eyes were now more open to a very poignant and important piece of our national heritage. I wonder how future generations will look at old, abandoned and decaying buildings from the era we now live in? Are the ghost estates destined to be the heritage that our future generations will seek out as examples of ‘old, abandoned, decaying’?

Link to my photo of the inside of the farm cottage.

Link to Tarquin Blake's 'Abandoned Ireland' website.

In The Moment

The lead-in to summer 2011 was not a good time for me. Several years of stress and strain were about to take their toll and my mind was saying “enough”. Things improved over the summer, thanks largely to support of family and friends.

Fast forward to Christmas and year end - a time of year when it is natural to look backward on what has been and to look forward to what one hopes the future may hold. This is where the wheels came off a bit. Looking backward just raised questions to which I may never get the answers. Probably best not to dwell on it then. What of the future? Well, I was struck by an interview on Jan 2^nd with Prof. Richard Tol of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). It turns out he has decided to up sticks from Ireland and head to the UK. He believes that austerity in Ireland will not last 4 years – more like 10-15 years. Probably best not to think too much about the future either, although my heart goes out to all, especially our young people, who are forced by economic circumstances to move overseas and also to their families who watch them go.    

So I’ve decided for the New Year to try to live just in the moment. It won’t be easy. There will be reminders of the stresses I’ve had over the past few years. At least now I know these are potential ‘trigger points’ for me so hopefully I will be able to deal with that. It will be impossible to avoid hearing about the future, especially from the ‘doom and gloom’ merchants. Ok – maybe they are right and we are in for a period of prolonged austerity. Our ancestors survived worse, and so will we. As individuals, our span of control in these matters is quite limited. What we can control is how we deal with it. I’m going to deal with it by not worrying about it – which is going to be a challenge for a natural worrier!

So, what’s going to keep me grounded ‘in the moment’? I believe my new-found interest in the form of photography is going to help me a lot with that. When I’m out with the camera I spend so much time thinking about my surroundings and the potential shots I can take that I don’t have time to worry or analyse anything else! And what else is photography other than capturing the moment – not the past, not the future but the absolute here and now. Fail to get the shot and it’s gone forever. That exact moment will never happen again.

To ensure I spend adequate time engaged in my pursuit, I’ve signed up for a ‘52’ project. That means submitting one photo a week on a specific theme for the duration of 2012. I can’t wait to submit my first photo at the end of this week. I’ll post a link to my ‘52’ here on my blog once I have posted the first picture. I’m hoping that some of the shots will inspire future blog posts – note - hoping, but not worrying!

Unfortunately, New Year’s Day doesn’t count in the particular ‘52’ project I signed up for, as Week 1 began at 00:00 on Jan 2^nd. However, the particular photo I wanted to accompany this blog post is one I took on January 1^st. It was at the Bray Charities Sea Swim. This annual event, organised by Bray Lions Club, has been going for 28 years and has the dual purpose of having some festive fun while raising funds for local charities. Over the years, the event has realised more than €250,000 for a long list of worthy local causes. Around 200 swimmers took part this year and proceeds are going to Bray St. Vincent de Paul.

Why did I choose this particular photo? Firstly, I like the expression on Frank’s face (and the colour of his towel, which originally attracted me to the shot). What I didn’t realise at the time is the great back-drop of the crowd. It shows what a community event the sea swim is – people straining to see or to catch a shot of a family member, neighbour or friend brave enough to take to the water. I’ll bet all those swimmers were ‘in the moment’ as they plunged in to the cold waters of the Irish Sea!


A very Happy New Year to you all  :)

In Gratitude

Life is full of ups and down. We learn through experience that we must take  the good with the bad. No one is immune to the ebb and flow of life's tide. How these highs and lows balance out often determines for us how we classify a particular year - was it a 'good' year or a 'bad' year.

It would be quite easy for me to classify 2011 as a personal 'annus horribilis'. Several years of extreme stress (though I didn't recognise it as such) finally took their toll. I could write many paragraphs about that. I could also write much about how that is now turning around for me - how I am ending the year in a much better place than when I started it. Perhaps those stories are best left till another time.

For now, at Christmas, the important thing for me is to recognise and thank all those who have helped me this year. First and foremost - my family. Knowing there are people behind you who understand you, love you and support you unconditionally is a wonderful thing. At a very practical level, through encouragement from my wonderful wife, I discovered the joys of photography last summer. We now share a hobby that gets us both out and about, spending more time together and enjoying our marvellous countryside. Often, it's just the simple things that help the most.

Widening the circle, I re-discovered (or perhaps really discovered for the first time) the meaning and value of true friends - those people in your life who will go the extra mile with you and for you. They are rare treasures indeed.

Widening further, while some are sceptical about social media such as Twitter, I have to say I am privileged in the past year to have come to know so many great people in my little corner of the Twitterverse. It has been a joy to witness, through initiatives such as #twitterxmassingle and #depressionhurts, how the medium of Twitter is being used as a power for good in our community. These, along with the ordinary, everyday, friendly exchanges in 'twitter village' have been very uplifting for me throughout the year. I'm not quite sure how I came to follow so many good-hearted people - perhaps it's serendity!

For all the help and support I have received this year, in so many ways from so many people - thank you!

So, as I end 2011, would I still classify it as an 'annus horribilis'? Yes I would, overall. To do otherwise would be failing to recognise the place I was in. However, I sense a phoenix arising from the ashes and as 2012 beckons I am very optimistic that it has great potential to be an 'annus mirabilis'. 

Wishing you, one and all, a Very Happy Christmas and all the best for 2012.

PS - I promise the next blog post will include a photograph!