red mum

Some of the contestants from the Lovely Girls, I mean Rose of Tralee contestants have been visiting Leinster House this afternoon, here they are during their plinth photocall which was attracting quite a crowd. And of course they ALL have lovely bottoms.

The weather was simply beautiful over the weekend and on Sunday we headed up to our favourite spot in the Phoenix Park, finishing the day with a pint in the Hole in the Wall, sometimes it just doesn’t get better than that.

I can’t seem to resist shadows of bikes (the addition of a Dutch Gold can was just ehm gold!) , here’s another bike shadow taken on Manor Street in Stoneybatter.

Obviously these hipstamatic pics are going to be the subject of ongoing posts, I simply can’t resist them. Aside from the drama of the images, one of the things I particularly love about them is the same thing I’ve felt about digital photography in general, for little to no cost (camera aside of course) anyone can have fun with it and being on your phone, which we all carry with us at all times, it can’t be easier.

At one stage with film I just couldn’t afford photography anymore, despite having my own make-shift darkroom between paper and chemicals (and a shite darkroom location, ie my old leaking light bathroom) you literally think about how much each frame costs you from taking to printing; this changed for me with digital photography. Since I got my first digital camera I haven’t taken one pic on film, despite many threats about pulling my old film camera out. I’ve a lubitel camera that I haven’t taken pics with in about 10 years (though I will again sometime). For those people who will probably never get near a lomo camera or whatever, the hipstamatic app allows everyone to have a bit of fun with the app giving toy camera effects, course they are not as great as the real thing, but it comes a good second.

At some stage, when I have somewhere for it, I will set up the darkroom again, nothing can beat a couple of hours in a darkroom, the smells, seeing the result appear before you, for now needs must as there is nowhere in our house to set up another darkroom. Actually keeping my enlarger when I moved house became a bone of contention between Nanny and me, she could not at all understand why I would keep it. But why on earth would I get rid of it!

But back to hipstamatic pics, on most occasions I’m also taking the same image with my camera, and of course there are times when the phone is the closest I have to having the camera with me and on that note alone its better than nothing You can see more hipstamatic pics on Pixie.