Peoples Photography 2010

I’m almost ready for Peoples Photography 2010. Good thing too considering it’s on this weekend. The last batch of prints arrived back from the printers today and over the weekend I settled on the technique I will use to hang the photos. I decided to go with a hopefully quicker approach, pre-hanging the mounted photos on black “webbing”. Then I can fold up the display the night before and each morning just unfold it, hang it on the railings and secure the bottom tightly. I’ve seen similar work well for other exhibitors on other years so fingers crossed it works for me.

Tonight the mounting process starts and while time consuming is at least achievable with effort. Then I will select the final 20 to display and the backups to keep in the box in case I get bored of what I have on display. Ok, so maybe I’m not as ready as I could have been if I’d started earlier but I’ll get there before Saturday, fingers crossed.

Mrs Fahey and Son Tom

This photo is from Marlfield church and graveyard outside Clonmel. It’s my old family graveyard but has become very overgrown lately with only a few families maintaining their plots while the older parts of the graveyard are reclaimed by nature. Thats a shame since lots of effort went into cleaning up and restoring the place 20 years ago.

This cross jumps out because someone is making small efforts to maintain the area around it, yet there is very little information about the people whose grave this marks. All it lists is Mrs Fahey & Son Tom. There is no date visible, no ages, not even a first name for Mrs Fahey. The fact that the text is still so clear and the wooden cross has not decayed indicates it’s relatively recent compared to the rest of the graveyard.

Flower in the Tracks

As I mentioned in an earlier post I was recently lucky enough to win an iPhone 3GS. Just in time to replace my old 3G which was dying under the demands of the new iOS 4 I had foolishly upgraded to. One of the things I did not like about the 3G was the camera but the 3GS has a much improved 3 megapixels, auto focus and a touch focus screen.

One day last week while walking to the Luas tram home I spotted this flower head dropped in the tram lines and it seemed like the most interesting thing around to try and photograph with the new iPhone. I didn't put the image on my computer. I downloaded some photo apps on the iPhone and just used those to tweak the picture. It's still hard to judge the image on a small screen but I was pretty pleased with the result and how easy it all was. It's not perfect but it's a camera phone. so what else could I expect.

The unfortunate thing is the camera in the 3GS is so much better than the 3G I now really want the iPhone 4 with its 5 megapixel camera :-)

iPhone 3GS

I recently won an iPhone 3GS, pretty lucky because I'd made the mistake of upgrading my iPhone 3G to the new iOS4 and while it worked it was woefully slow and suffered frequent app crashes. I had decided to keep it for a few weeks and then get the iPhone 4 when it's released in Ireland (rumour is 23rd July) . I could have gone through the process to downgrade the phone to the old OS but I liked the features such as folders.

On the other hand the iPhone 3GS with iOS4, after 1 day of use, is a huge leap forward. It was free, which is always a big bonus. It is much faster, I mean MUCH faster than the 3G. Even without iOS4 my 3G didn't run this fast. The extra processor and memory are obviously key. Also apparent now is that apps might be written to run on the iPhone 3G but they are written to run properly on the newest phone. Apps that ran painfully slowly now run smoothly and load quickly. So far no apps have crashed but it's early days. With the iOS4 it's good enough to make me consider waiting a while before using my upgrade to buy an iPhone 4.

The camera is a major improvement. I rarely used the camera on my 3G. It produced poor, low quality out of focus pictures that were just about suitable for twitpic but not much else. The new camera performs much better. I still have to use it in anger but the touch focus and image quality on the screen are greatly improved. I still wont be selling any of the photos from it at Peoples Photography but I can now use it as a camera when I'm out with friends.

However it's not all rosy in the 3GS garden, there are a few issues that would make me pause and glad I didnt have to spend my own money.

First signal strength seems to be reduced. Not by much but in my current office where I can just get Edge it's reduced enough to make the difference between a connection and No Service. In places where I used to get 1 bar most of the time, I now get No Service consistently. Same at home. The 3G used to hold a poor connection on the bedside locker, the 3GS just goes to No Service and stays there until I move it a few feet closer to the door. Maybe that's Apples "reported signal strength" software bug but the 3G running iOS4 seemed to cope better with poor signals so I suspect its a hardware change. It makes be worried that the new iPhone4 with it's more publicised reception issues might not perform at all in my environment.

Second issue is with the build quality. Strange for a device that is using the same body case so it should feel the same but something about it feels more plastic and the edges around the silver surround feel sharper like they almost meet perfectly, but not quite. Maybe I'd broken in my old 3G and smoothed off the edges but I don't remember ever running my finger along the edges of the silver and thinking it was kinda sharp. The edges make it feel more plastic. Perhaps I'm just working on a phone from an end of life batch where Apple were switching focus to the iPhone 4 but somehow this one feels strange. I wont be sending it back or anything daft like that but it's just a surprise from Apple.

Third, not a phone specific problem but an iOS4 problem. I'm not overly keen on the way multitasking works. Apps dont really close, they go into the background and in some case continue to run, in others they just seem to sit there. I got used to closing apps and having them close fully. Now they go into the background and I dont need them there. I realise I'll get used to the new way of closing apps but perhaps all Apple need to do is allow the user to specify which apps are backgrounded and which are just closed. Maybe there is a new setting I'm missing but a switch in the settings page for Apps would do the trick.

But those problems are minor and really I'm just nit picking. The phone with the new iOS4 together are a huge improvement. I'd recommend any 3GS user to upgrade to iOS4 while warning any 3G users not to upgrade without giving it serious consideration. That said I wouldnt advise anyone to buy a 3GS now, certainly not with their own money. The 4 is coming out in Ireland in a few weeks so wait for that. A cheap 3GS may seem like a bargain right now but I can see the same performance issues I had with the 3G hitting the 3GS as developers write new apps to use the improves CPU, memory and camera of the 4. You will still be able to run those applications but you'll definately be a second class citizen in the app world.

Photos for Peoples Photo

I got my first set of prints for Peoples Photography 2010. God I’ve got lots of work to do. I think I selected the incorrect dimensions with the online printer which didnt help the cropping but leaving that aside only one image seemed acceptable straight away. Two or three others are close and the rest are probably beyond any hope of making it into the exhibition.

I've managed to get a nice one of the Ha'Penny Bridge and a couple of Guinness photos, plus one old one from Ballymun that I liked. A couple of ones on the bubble are a canal photo and a photo of a row boat on the Liffey. Ones that made the probably rejected pile are of the Central Bank and one of the Fusilier arch which I kinda like but looks a little too over processed. Maybe I can fix that. I fear however that I'm going to have to reuse photos from last year. I didn't want to do that but with 8 months ruined by business travel I've afraid I'll have no choice.

Fire

A couple of weekends ago I went to the annual Street Performance World Championship in Merrion Sq. A weekend of street performers from around the world competing for votes, and of course cash from the audience. One of the stages was in front of Government Buildings and I was there watching Dr Kaboom set off fireballs within sight of the Taoiseachs office. I couldnt help but wonder if Cowen was inside looking out at the fireballs and wondering how long it will be before the smoke and flames are more serious. I bet when Cowen dreams of fireballs outside his office he doesn't picture the Gardai standing by and applauding, at least not yet.

Kenny Lives

I cant believe Fine Gael didn't get rid of Enda Kenny. By an apparently slim majority the parliamentary party of Fine Gael passed a vote of confidence leaving some of their brightest stars on the scrap heap in favour of a man who seems doomed to lead them back into opposition or junior partnership after the next election.

Fianna Fail were the big winners last week with the focus switching from Brian Cowens incompetent management of the national finances when he was Finance Minister to Enda Kennys incompetent management of the Fine Gael party. Both survived but Labour leader Eamon Gilmore must think all his dreams have come true as he now eyes a real shot at becoming Taoiseach after the next election.

The big looser is the country. A Labour-Fine Gael government would be strange enough but we'd probably survive but if the last poll is to be believed we now face some insane possibilities like a Labour-Sinn Fein government in 2012. Sinn Fein would give anything to be in power for the 100 anniversary of Easter 1916 in 2016 and Labour would give anything to finally have a shot at the big seats. God help us all if that happens because I don't see there being a single job left in the country outside the civil service after 5 years of that government.

They Are Killing Kenny

The leader of Fine Gael Enda Kenny looks like he is on the way out with Richard Bruton finally plucking up the courage to stand against the bland one. Kenny's supporters are quick to say that Enda has been a wonderful party leader (arent they all until the end) and has led the party back from the brink of anilation. Sure, in the aftermath of Michael Noonan Fine Gael were in serious trouble but Kennys great feat of leadership was to restore Fine Gael the main party of opposition back to being the main party of opposition. While Fianna Fail were destroying all around them and leading the country into an economic melt down was Kenny really leading or was he a passenger on the Fine Gael boat as the tide turned and lifted all the opposition parties? The latter I suspect.

Fine Gael should have won the last election, Fianna Fail were on the ropes and on the way out until Kenny debated Ahern and the country realised that Kenny was as two dimensional as his Southpark namesake and somehow managed to say fewer meaningful words than that anoraked faceless mumbler, cartoon Kenny I mean, not Ahern. Fianna Fail won the election and in hindsight that saved Fine Gael from being in power during the economic crash that followed. That wasn't leadership either. Enda cant take credit for that as a piece of political strategy, unless his performance in the debates was one worthy of a life time achievement Oscar. He was in it to win it and he lost it. That was the time Bruton should have said, enough is enough lets get some leadership. Instead Enda managed to lead a triumphant return to opposition, the Irish tradition of glorious defeat lifting him to new heights of leadership.

His next big adventure was into celebrity management. George Lee, economic wonder kid of RTE showed up on the Fine Gael ticket and won a by-election. Lee was a man on a trajectory to political stardom so Kenny started Lees political apprenticeship with a stint cleaning boots in the dressing room of the Fine Gael finance team. After less than a year of Kenny management Lee was on his way out of the Dail and back to RTE. Of course that wasnt Kennys fault either, Lee should have stuck it out. Lee was being childish. Lee should have been happy to learn while others led. Maybe, but surely Enda could have put his arm around Georges shoulder on a couple of occassions and said "George my son, one day this will all be yours, but not just yet".

So I believe Kenny instead of providing the great leadership his supporters worship was just tagging along for the ride. Fine Gael should have had the courage to look for a strong innovative risk taking leader instead of one who kept the ship on course for a steady second place. But is Richard Bruton the best person for the job instead? Who knows, but one mark against him is the fact that he has waited this long to fix the biggest problem in Fine Gael. Did he think Kenny would come good, win over the public and smash Fianna Fail leaders one after another until Fine Gael could stroll into Government Buildings? Did he think Kenny would see the light and step aside? Run for President and hand Richard the reigns of power?Either way Bruton also damaged the Fine Gael cause by waiting so perhaps his chance has gone along with Enda.

iPhone 4

All I can say is I REALLY want one of the new iPhone 4s. I have had an iPhone since they first came out in Ireland, my old original iPhone is still going strong as my fiancees phone. I upgraded to a 3G when they came out in Ireland and loved the 3G data, the GPS and the new black design. When the 3GS came out I didn't bother with that since it was too similar to my 3G for me to justify the upgrade. Now my 3G is over 18 months old and I'm entitled to a gold upgrade with O2, maybe business travel isn't so bad.

Just on schedule Apple have announced the new iPhone 4 and it looks the business. People called the iPad a large iPhone, I think the opposite is true, the iPhone 4 is a small iPad and then some. The A4 chip, better battery, multi-tasking, HD video, video calling, 5 megapixel camera. I am worried about the glass front and back which may be prone to shattering if some reports are correct and I'd have liked a 64GB version but those two complaints aside this looks to be the phone I want. I only hope I can get it before I go on vacation, the camera and HD video would be great.

Business travel sucks

I've been traveling a lot recently with work and while it might seem like a great thing but business travel gets old very fast. It means I haven't had much time for blogging or photography but hopefully now as the summer goes on things will settle down and I'll be able to get back to life in Dublin.