Thomas Fitzgerald Photography

I had all these great plans lined up for things to do in January. I was going to absolutely make sure I kept up with my photo of the day. I was going to make sure I had all my galleries and portfolios updated. I was even going to work on some new merchandise designs. Unfortunately all of this went out the window when I got sick a few weeks ago, and I’ve been pretty much out of action since then. It’s very frustrating, especially when you work freelance, to have an illness take you out of the loop.

I had been trying really hard too to keep up my 365 project but in the end I just didn’t have the energy. I had really wanted to make a go of it this year, but at least I got further than last year. I don’t know whether to just keep going now, to start again, or to post images for the missing days belatedly. Any suggestions ? Actually the one thing I did find as I struggled in my weakened state, was that by forcing yourself to try and take at least one image every day is that you start to think outside the box pretty quickly. I think it doesn’t have to be a great photo, just something, anything. It will make you look in the world, even your own little confined world, in a different light. I’m pretty disappointed in myself that I couldn’t keep going but I was in a bad way. Anyway, hopefully I’m on the mend now and I can get back to regular blogging, and more importantly regular photo taking.

Actually, on the subject of regular photo taking, I heartily recommend this weeks D-Town TV which has an excellent interview with the renowned Chase Jarvis. It’s well worth checking out as Chase gives some tips on becoming a better photographer and it’s an interesting way of looking at things.

Oh, and while you’re at it check out this gorgeous little video I came across on vimeo. It was shot on the D3s and Is quite beautiful (in my opinion)

It’s quite popular at this time of the year to start a “one a day” photo project. I attempted to do it last year but it didn’t work out to well. Anyway, I’m having another go at it this year and I’ve set up a special blog over at Tumblr to keep them all together. I’ll post shots here too but I wanted somewhere to have a nice clean record of my year in Photography. Please have a look and subscribe to the RSS. Hopefully I’ll make it through the full year this time!

Wishing you and yours a Happy Christmas this festive season!

If you were a regular visitor to this site you no doubt realise that it has undergone some major changes. I had been unhappy with the design for some time and recently I have been working hard behind the scenes on a new look. The makeover though is more than just skin deep. When I set about re-designing my site the last time I had two goals for it. One was as a portal to establish a (very basic) photography business and the other was as a photo blog and a place to share my joy of photography with the world. Unfortunately the way my site was laid out it had become difficult to do either.

Updating galleries was painfully tedious and involved a lot of hand coding. The blog was mixed in with the home page and the result was a mash up of content that was confusing and not very nice. I searched and searched for a better solution. What I wanted was a way to present my photos in a large format upfront whenever someone visited the site. I wanted it to have impact. I wanted my photography to be the first thing people saw when they first came to the site. I had considered hand coding a separate start page, using some flash galleries and then linking that to a separate wordpress blog, but it kept coming back to the same problem. I really needed something that was easy to update and maintain.

Salvation came in the form of a premium wordpress theme from the good folks over at WooThemes. I had signed up for the WooThemes developer package a while ago as I was working on some other web sites at the time. They recently launched a new theme called “Exposure” which offered some pretty great options for photoblogging. But even more than that it enabled one to use wordpress as a full bore content management system for a photography website. It allowed me to do what I wanted to do all in one system and more importantly, I didn’t have to go near flash. So two weeks ago I set up a testing server locally on my imac and began customising and altering the theme for use on the new site.

I am not a web designer. I dabble now and again, but I am certainly not an expert. With that in mind I am particularly proud of what I’ve achieved here. Again kudos has to go back to the developers of the original theme. They have designed it in such a way that it is very easy to alter and keep track of. I’ve done some theme customising before but this is the most advanced level of alterations that I have ever attempted to achieve.

The result is a site that allows me to easily change the images on the home page by using the standard wordpress tools. So now I can change images out regularly without having to do some coding joo joo, and hopefully it will make the visitor experience more dynamic. I also have an integrated blog and I’ve set it up so that the posting area is bigger, meaning images posted in my blog posts will be bigger and therefore a better experience to readers there too.

I really hope you like the new look. Like I said, I’m not a web developer so I am really proud of what I’ve managed to achieve. So please have a browse around and give me feedback on what you think, and if you see anything that you think might need to be improved.

I hope that this will be the start of a new chapter for me on this site. I really love photography and I really want to create a vibrant weblog. Before the design issues were constantly niggling at me and it put me off, so I hope now to go at it full bore and give you the reader a reason to come back and enjoy sharing my passion for photography.

Thanks and enjoy.

I’m afraid this blog has once again fallen silent over the last few days. I’ve been pretty sick having caught a nasty bacterial flu which in turn gave me bronchitis and tracheitis (a lovely combination). So this has pretty much been my view for the last few days. Not exactly a rich tapestry of photographic opportunity, but anyway. Hopefully I’ll get back to posting again soon.

For those who subscribe or visit this blog semi regularly you may have noticed a dearth of updates over the last week or so. I had a slight run in with the Irish health care system last week which you can read about here and I’ve been busy with design work. I also added to my ever growing family of camera equipment with the purchase of a Canon 5D Mark II. For those who know me or have read my blog for a while, you’ll know that it wasn’t an easy decision. I had a 5D Mark I and while I liked some of the results, the camera annoyed the life out of me. In the end though the decision came down to a combination of the increased resolution, the video and the price. As my design work focuses mostly on motion graphics I really wanted a capable camera for capturing elements etc. The D90′s video just doesn’t cut it. I could have waited and gone for the 7D with its expanded video options but I wanted a full frame camera again.

I’m in the process of writing a review / diary of my experiences with the 5DII. I know there’s hundreds of reviews of the camera out there already, but I think I can bring a different approach. For a start, I wasn’t in love with it before I bought it, which many 5D owners seem to have been. I won’t hold back on the criticism or the adulation where it’s deserved. Anyway, for now here’s a few stills from the camera and a sample of video (which really wasn’t planned – so forgive its failings)

Breakfast In Marley Park from Thomas Fitzgerald on Vimeo

Apologies for the lack of updates for the next week. I’m on vacation in New York and won’t be blogging frequently, but I’ll be back to normal updates in early september !

A little while ago I ordered a set of business cards from Moo.com. If you haven’t heard of Moo you should check them out. They’ve done some really innovative things with printing on demand, including their famous mini cards. When I started to try and take this whole Photography thing seriously I figured I’d need some eye catching business cards and luckily Moo now offer that as an option. What makes moo so special? You do all the design online using their very clever web interface, and you can have a different image on the back of every card. Not only that but it integrates with flickr making your image selection a snap.

What really sets them apart though is their packaging, and branding. Everything is beautifully packaged and their branding is cheeky, bright and fun. It really is a breath of fresh air and very clever. The business cards came in a lovely strong black box, and each one comes with separators for “theirs and mine” so you could use the box for clients cards as well. Each box also has a little joke card in it. For example, one is “buzzword bingo” ! It’s really really clever.

The quality is superb too. The card is thick and strong, and much better than most business cards I’ve ever seen. The quality of the printing of the images is pretty slick too. I wish I could be more eloquent about just how awesome they are. All in all I’m really really impressed and couldn’t recommend them enough.

I will have a stand at the “Crafty Market” Indoor Arts and Crafts market in Dublin 8 This sunday, Showing and Selling prints. If you’re in the area why not stop by. It’s a good community project and worthy of support. Check out their website for more details.

Here’s a map of the Area. Unfortunately Google Maps is not entirely up to date with some of the lesser known constantly chganging areas of Dublin, so the exact address is not on the map, but this is the area.

Welcome to the all new and much, much improved Thomas Fitzgerald Photography website. I’ve spent the last while working to bring a more dynamic site to the web, one that is easier to update and looks good too. The old website was designed using iWeb and bolted together with a wordpress blog, but it had some serious problems. The way I had cheated some of iWeb’s limitations made it very hard to update and I was never really happy with the design.

This new site though will make updating much easier so I should be able to bring you fresh content on a regular basis. I found an amazing WordPress theme called Atlantica which serves as a powerful content management system and has allowed me to bring you this fresh new site. I hope you like it and I am to be much more prolific on the blog too.

Recently I left my full time job to pursue my Phography in greater detail but I had let things slip as I pursued design work as well, but my aim was always to bring my Photography to the foreground and re-designing this site was a big part of it. In the future I hope to share not just my images and art, but also insights into the world of Photography, the technical side of things as well as the artistic, and hopefully lots of tips and tricks along the way. In fact I have lots of plans going forward and I’m really excited about what the future holds. So thank you to everyone who visits my web sites on a regular basis and please bookmark this new adventure, add me to your RSS feed and follow me on twitter.

You won’t regret it, honestly.