Conor Cahill dot Com

Looking for photos of the Cheltenham Science Festival or FameLab?

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:45:21 +0000

If you are looking for pics of the Cheltenham Science Festival or Famelab, the good news is that I’ve started posting stuff on my Photoshelter site. Be warned though it’s going to take some time to get all the selected pictures up (blasted RAW files!).

The gallery is available here.

Currently there are about 50 pictures available, it will be almost 100 by tomorrow morning and it will expand daily as I process files. Unfortunately after a week at the festival, I now have a ton of other work to catch up on, so I cannot just work on those files… If you like any shots, drop me a line.

White badges, everyone should have ‘em

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:36:44 +0000

Really and truly, white balancing can be a pain in the bum. If I find the person who put magenta filters on the lights at the Cheltenham Science Festival, there’ll be trouble, I can tell you.

However, Robert Winston seems to have preempted my problems. I just noticed while editing a long sequence of shots of him that he was nice enough to wear a small white badge on his shirt (it appears to say ‘Geek Pop’). Anyway, this is completely fantastic, because his bright pink shirt was making guestimating the white balance rather difficult. Now I can just click on his white badge with the eyedropper tool, and for the white point at least, I’m done.

I will have to ask all speakers to wear a white badge in future…

Losing count…

admin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:50:39 +0000

I started the week never having photographed (to my knowledge) anyone in Wikipedia… I think I’m now up to 6.

Heston Blumenthal…

More standing in front of more interesting stuff

admin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:46:29 +0000

Continuing on with my effort to ’stand in front of more interesting stuff’, today I managed to stand in front of Dara O Briain. Valuable lesson learned today though, never put down the camera bag. Just as we were getting set up I realised I’d left my flash remote trigger in the bag in a room downstairs. Doh! When you have 2 minutes with a busy celebrity, it’s really not a good idea to spend 1.5 of those minutes running downstairs to get your flash trigger… I blame it on low blood sugar. Tomorrow I will endeavour to eat more than an apple for lunch…

Tearsheet: Times Online 06 June

admin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:36:17 +0000

Photo in The Times Online today of FameLab UK winner for 2009, Tom Whyntie

I really wish they’d used this one though…

The Times Cheltenham Science Festival Day 2

admin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:49:15 +0000

Just completed Day 2 of The Times Cheltenham Science Festival…

‘Stand in front of more interesting stuff’…

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:19:28 +0000

I’ve been looking at Joe McNally’s book ‘The Moment it Clicks’ again. He has a nice anecdote about how he was told that one of the best ways to get better pictures is to ’stand in front of more interesting stuff’.

I’m trying that in earnest all this week as the photographer for the press office for the Cheltenham Science Festival. Yesterday with my colleague Sue we had the opportunity to interview and photograph Kathy Sykes, the festival director. This might be the first time I’ve photographed someone who has their own Wikipedia entry. I hope to be adding a few more this week…

Anyhoo, it’s always a pleasure with someone who is confident and relaxed in front of the camera.

Single flash off to the left through a shoot-thru umbrella. Auto exposure with a long lens and a bit of exposure compensation on both the flash and the camera.

Packing for a week of photography

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:08:07 +0000

So, tomorrow I’ll be at the Cheltenham Festival of Science for a week. Hope to have some nice things to share here during that time.

I recently read a blog post on the site of an infamous photo blogger (who shall remain nameless, he doesn’t need publicity from me) about how you can tell the difference between a proper ‘pro’ photographer, and a wannabe by looking at their bag. According to his criteria, I fall into the wannabe category because I have more than 2 lenses, and I have a backpack to carry the gear in. Actually, most of the pros I know have backpacks, and more than one has the very amateurish €2000 14-24 lens ( I don’t have one of them, so maybe I am a pro after all)

Anyhoo, hope I don’t fall over tomorrow, cos I might not be able to get back up.

Ok, I will admit, I don’t like to work out of a backpack, I have a shoulder bag rolled up in my other bag that I can use for work, the pack is just for transport…

Website version 2

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:03:35 +0000

So, after a bit of thought, have made some behind-the-scenes changes that hopefully fixed many issues on the site, although I strongly suspect that there are still some gremlins in the system… We shall see

Slideshows in Wordpress

admin — Sun, 24 May 2009 14:22:06 +0000

Just a quick test to figure out how to mount slideshows in WordPress