In Photos dot org

I’ve mentioned Spencer Tunick a few times already on this blog and it seems he’s coming to Ireland soon and bringing his unusual brand of nude photography with him.

Internationally acclaimed contemporary artist Spencer Tunick will be offering the public the chance of a lifetime to become part of his first back to back city art project in both Cork and Dublin this June. Multiple groups of nude participants will be photographed outdoors by Tunick as part of his series of installations that have previously taken place in cities around the world including New York, Amsterdam and Mexico City.

Cork: 17th June 2008
Dublin Docklands: 21st June 2008

And, considering the really bad weather lately, let’s hope the sun shines when he’s taking his photos. From the FAQ:

What will happen if it’s raining or very cold weather?
The installation will happen rain or shine. The installation will happen if the weather is cold, but the artist will work as quick as possible to make his art.

No, I won’t be volunteering. Good luck if you’re going!

RTE Radio 1’s Flux ran a programme on the treatment of a community following the death of a woman and her two sons in Firhouse, Co Dublin. last year.

Local community members were interviewed almost a year later by Flux to find out how journalists and photographers treated them. Some of the stories are shocking, others have been discounted as pure fantasy, and the newspapers are defended by a member of staff from the Irish Daily Mail.

I’m writing this from memory because the sound on my desktop box is broken and the sound on my Macbook is just too low for comfort. I used mplayer to record the stream using the following command, mplayer rtsp://streaming2.rte.ie/2007/0129/29012007rte-flux.rm -novideo -ao pcm. That dumps the realaudio stream to a file called audiodump.wav. I wish mencoder worked on audio streams…

It’s well worth a listen though.

Joyce and the Spire

James Joyce, forever forced to look upon the Spire on O’Connell Street Dublin. Here’s a humorous look at the names of the statues and monuments in Dublin. I had heard that the Spire was nicknamed the “Stiletto in the Ghetto”, but I hadn’t heard it called, “North Pole”!

Overhead wires destroy urban photography and this is no exception. I could have tried to clone it out but it’s notoriously difficult to clone out objects against a varying sky. Ah well.

I like this: self-portrait with 6×9 ultrawide pinhole camera

Reflection on the Spire

O’Connell Street in Dublin is reflected in the polished surface of the Spire. A young teenager leans on the edifice in the shade away from the glaring sun. This was inspired by a shot I saw one another photoblog, can’t remember which one now. Does anyone know the image I’m talking about?

Here’s another picture of the Spire showing it’s full 120m height!

If you’re curious, the Spire can just about be seen from space as Google Maps shows!

Who’s for supper?

A mural on a wall in Dublin a few weeks ago.

We passed this while walking back to our hotel. I get the feeling there’s a story behind this picture. Does anyone know it?

Cross in the sky

I noticed this cross in the sky while walking around Dublin a few weeks ago. When I saw a church I had to make this shot and I’m quite happy with the way it came out!

Honest Smoothies

We bought smoothies in Honest, a small shop in Dublin. They were having problems with their machines and gave us one of the smoothies free but they didn’t taste all that great unfortunately.

Child Asleep

A child sleeps while the rest of his family mill about.

Taken in the same market as yesterday’s music posters in Dublin.

Love messages

Messages of love scrawled on a wall in Dublin.

Music Posters

Music posters for sale in a market in Dublin a few weeks ago.