One geek still howling at the moon
I guess yesterady wasn’t such a complete writeoff after all. I managed to get a few (94 :) photos of a street soccer match out behind the Jervis shopping centre before the gang of teenagers chased me off..literally. I dropped down to medium jpeg resolution, set the camera to monochrome and started snapping madly. Considering the only lens with me was the 50mm I’m happy that any came out okay.
You can find the balance of photos in my Dublin set.
Really and fucking truly, it was a waste of a day:
They requested from me a form that I was specifically informed on the paperwork that I didn’t need, forcing me to out and wandering Ballsbridge in search of a net cafe to download it (to the lady in Jury’s: You are a lifesaver, if I knew your name I’d name my nextborn after you).
They requested paperwork from Mariah that I had already provided from her family. Again, she wasn’t supposed to need these papers.
First, I’m angry because of the manifest lack of help from the staff. To help someone is to take responsibility for one’s actions, right? If nothing else, it was a lesson for me in the danger’s on an entrenched bureaucracy. There was a lovely family I met there who were living in a very remote part of Galway. The father was Irish and the mother French, and both of them were naturalized US citizens. Because of this their son didn’t automatically gain US citizenship (as I understand it) or a US passport, as he was born in France, and both the French and Irish American embassies had kept the family running in circles as no one at either embassy was willing to take responsibility for their actions and take the five minutes to help them.
Second, I’m sad at the siege mentality on display at the embassy. I only spoke to one American the whole time I was there and she was (seemingly) a second-level clerk. The security guards were private contractors and all of the administrative staff I met were Irish. We were kept in a portacabin that was a safe distance from the embassy, after being searched, all our electronics quarantined and escorted by a guard at all times.
I’m sure that little four year old girl the guard roared at was actually a ninja who kept coils of shigawire in her hair.
I’m going to call the embassy in a few minutes to arrange a new interview.
/rant
(Insert Gary Jules’ excellent remix of a bad 80’s song here)
You can find some background on this photo here on boards.ie. Assuming you can get through - it’s sad that the site has become a victim of it’s own success that it’s nearly completely inaccessible for large parts of each day because it get’s so much traffic. Failing that, you can find the tutorial I used here, that I in turn stole from Flickr. The photo quality was pretty bad as I was more interested in getting the photos taken, than anything I would keep (the fact it was raining didn’t help),
Otherwise, it’s a slow day. It’s cold, pissing rain and and I’m stuck in waiting for a package for mum anyways. Using said slow day to go back over my work, I think I’ve decided that I like black and white photography. I always seem happier with a photo when I either bleach it or just strip out the colour entirely. So yeah, I’m looking forward to getting my new camera - I’ve a roll of shiny new B&W film sitting on my shelf waiting for it.
All that aside, yes I do smile:
Don’t tell anyone though, I’ve gone to great lengths to convince people that the only facial expressions I can safely manage are either a sour grimance or a fierce scowl.
