Here’s James, who has just began his Baby’s First Year photo-package at our Dundonald Studio. He’ll get a studio visit at 4 months, 8 months and 12 months, and a beautiful frwmed piece of wall art, a photo from each of his visits framed in a triplicate frame. What a great deal, and great fun as well.
Watching Bethany, my granddaughter making chocolate chip cookies, I was intrigued by how her hands kneaded the dough, and caught just a few of the moments on the Fujifilm X-T2. I kept the aperture wide open to reduce the depth of field, and blur the background as much as possible. Difficult enough exposures, for the kitchen was quite dark at the time, and ISO was 12800, so some of the images very noisy indeed. However…
What a delight it is to welcome little babies (and their parents of course) to our Dundonald Studio to make memories that will endure. Especially when they are there for a ‘Baby’s First Year’ photo-package. It’s wonderful to see the babies throughout their first year of life, and watch them growing.
Today Baby Alice came with mummy for her 4 month + session, and what a lovely girl she was…
At our professional studio at Dundonald, we have a variety of posing aids and props to suit all ages, including Sydney – the Studio Snake. Snakes are well known for mesmerising their victims, until they are under their influence. So when baby George came in for his second ‘Baby’s First Year’ portrait appontment, he fell under Sydney’s charm and soon was totally spellbound! Here they are together…
Lots of lovely babies in the studio this week. I run a ‘KidsClub’ offer, with (usually) three studio visits over the first year, at 4 months, when they are able to lift their head, at 8 months when they can sit up, and at 12 months when they can stand.
Not everyone want to have their kids featured on a website or social media of course, but thankfully, these two lovelies had no such reservations.
Baby Daisy, celebrating her 1st Birthday with a special cake. 
Baby Edison, at his eight month session.
On a bright sunny April Friday, we visited Monaghan on business, and spend a little time around the busy town centre wiith the Fujifilm X-T2. Here’s some of the images.
If you want to make a photo into a line drawing here’s an easy and effective way to do it. (Just hold on… why would ANYONE want to do that? Lots of reasons, like making a colouring page for children, or creating artwork for a website…)
Here’s how I do it:-
A wee day off on Easter Tuesday and Janette and I took a wee trip down to Banbridge and a walk along the ‘Boulevard’ – the new name for the outlet centre. After all it was a wet day, with thunder storms and hailstones, and the Boulevard is covered, at least in part, and that meant there were quite a few people about to add human interest. Needless to say I brought the Fujifil X-T2 camera, and made a couple of exposures as we walked around.
Q. What does a photographer do on his day off?
A. Photography.
With no studio appointments on a Friday, and lured by the prospect of a decent spring day, and with another matter to be attended to in the area, I travelled to Ballinderry. It’s a rural area in Co Antrim, between Moira and Crumlin.
To be more precise, my real destination was Upper Ballinderry –
(There was a yarn – about a Ballinderry man who wanted to travel home from Japan, and who went to a travel agent in a small remote Japanese town, and asked for travel to Ballinderry. With oriental inscrutability and precision the clerk replied, Yes sir. Upper or Lower Ballinderry?)
He’d find it hard to travel to Ballinderry by train now as my first stop in the village proved. NIR has mothballed the line between Lisburn and Antrim and Ballinderry Station is now a shadow of its former self. The Antrim bound platform has been dismantled and the station building allowed to decay. The entrance to the station is now blocked. The track is still in place, – it was always a single track line, – but the passing loop has gone and the line seems to be used now as a siding. Today it had goods wagons sitting on the track.
On a recent visit to Killinchy I travelled on down to the shores of Strangford Lough at Whiterock Bay. The Lough is splattered with islands at this point, and closest to the shore, joined by a causeway, is Sketrick Island, with its distictive castle.
The castle is a 16th Century Tower House, a defensive position which saw battle in the 17th Century. Originally four storeys high, part of the castle collapsed in 1896, and what remains is now curated by the NI Communities Historic Environment Dept.
