Three of my best photos

Last summer I bought an Olympus E500. It’s an old camera, but a good one. It’s far from perfect, especially at night but I’ve taken some pictures with it that I’m very happy with. Also, inspired by Al Humphrey’s (more on him to come) I decided to take 366 photos, one every day, in 2012. Since September last year, I’ve taken close to 4000 photos using my Olympus  and my iPhone. I feel I’ve been getting better and better and my photos from the last two months are far superior to anything I’ve ever taken before. Rather than throwing up every photo I take – they all make it to facebook - every little while I’m going to post up three or four of the photos I’m happiest with.

The first photo is one of the oldest ones that I’m proud of. It’s a photo of my girlfriend Eva on her 21st birthday. I love how she’s looking away from the camera at something else. Originally the composition of the photo was much worse but after a few months of improving my photography skills, I went back and re-edited the photo and now it’s one of my favourites.

Another reasonably early photo, this one is of my dog Nala – why she is named after a large golden lioness when she is none of those things remains a mystery. Both my dogs have become very fed up with me constantly pointing a camera at them and seem to do their best to be as un-photogenic as possible every time I do; this means it’s rare for me to get a nice shot of either of them. This photo is heavily cropped in order to make up for the inadequacies of my shooting. Ideally I would have liked to have left some space on the left side of the photo for her to be looking into. Unfortunately, my model being uncooperative and me not being the best photographer means that I didn’t. thinking on it now, I may retake this shot and leave space on the left next time.

The final photo of this post is the most recent. It was taken in March or April ( I think April) of this year on one of the first nice spring days. Myself and Eva went up to the local GAA pitch and chilled out with the Olympus on a tripod. Using the timer I was able to capture this self-(plus girlfriend) portrait. In terms of composition and other artsy-photographical terms the photo is probably nothing dramatic, but I really liked the experience of just relaxing and taking photos – it’s something we’ve done a lot more of since! – and this photo has been my iPhone screensaver for at least two months now.