I got this from playing football against members of the Garda Síochána na hÉireann, a clash of heads.

Some graffiti from Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Øresund Bridge connects Copenhagen (Denmark) and Malmo (Sweden). It’s a great bridge, when I was traveling over the first time there was a thunder storm which looked great although the lack of light made photographing it a bit difficult. This shot was taken on the return journey before the Roskilde Festival.

Oh and thanks to Felice for a great night in Malmo it was fun.

Maedhbh’s Wedding Dress.

Radiohead were amazing better than the Dublin gig, they had the same show but they didn’t play creep, thank God. Great atmosphere and great weather, Thom seemed to be having a good time.
Yeasayer put on a great show, lots of energy and the plenty of the Rock symbols from from the lead singer. Of course like all American bands they had to apologies for Bush, can’t wait till they have something else to apologies for. Have to go see them again and the new tracks sound great.

Black Mountain, about 100 times better than I thought it would be, the female vocalist was outstanding and we couldn’t see the lead singers face, it was all hair and beard. The music was other worldly, another band I have to see again.

Holy Fuck rock, bit like Battles. I’d go out of my way to see them again. The chants of ‘Holy Fuck! Holy Fuck!’ in Danish accents beforehand was very funny. Holy Fuck were much better than Fuck Buttons who I found a bit boring.

Band Of Horses great fun, and great music the lead singer was loving it, he kept saying it was the best day of his life, it sounded a bit hackneyed to us but you couldn’t help but love them.

Battles seen ‘em before, I don’t think anything could to top the gig in The Roisin Dubh in Galway. We listened to a few songs but left to go see Yeasayer.

MGMT.  I was a little disappointed by the gig, I think their album is great but maybe that’s down to the production by Dave Fridmann. Their a new band so maybe they need some time to perfect the live show.

The Notwist didn’t do anything for me.

We seen lots more bands including Slayer, Judas Priest (Spinal Tap is alive and well) and Grinderman which I thought might be good but the lyrics were trite and basically they were living off persona, we all agreed it was utter crap and went to watch something else. Cat Power was OK I thought she would be better. Kings Of Leon were OK.

No Roskilde for us next year, we’ll be saving for our wedding, hope 2010 is sunny.

Saturday 10:30
Got a train from Høje Taastrup with 4 Danish people and we go to Roskilde town. We walked the couple of Km to the gate. One of the Danish guys is a bit worse for wear and while holding a slab of Tuborg he slips down an embankment, he was OK and we had a good laugh about it. The same guy lost all his stuff and only found them again three days later, they were in the same place he left them, he was so drunk he just didn’t know where that was

Our Danish friend who was working at the Festival brought our bags into the campsite cause we had to queue, it was the longest queue I have ever been in there were 1000’s of people queuing.

Sunday 05:50

Phew 6 hours in a queue, (we fought for every meter) now we have to find our bags….. 40 mins later and we meet up with the Danes and Ken got his bags but mine we’re missing - no tent, no sleeping bag and I haven’t slept all night.

Sunday Approx 08:00

With the help of Peter we locate the rest of the stuff, it’s with a very drunk sleeping Dane.

Monday - Wednesday
Sunny days with some clouds to give us some respite. We had a good walk around the Campsite and checked out the Pavilion area (the only stage open during the build-up).

We went into Copenhagen one of the days and checked out a reggae band playing in Christiania, it was lovely and the Danes have some cool looking bicycles.

We had great craic in the campsite with the Danes playing “Beer Bowling”, a game involving two teams of two, each team member is either sitting on a camping chair or kneeing, the teams are 10 meters apart and each team has a 2lt bottle placed between the two members. The object of the game is to bowl or throw an American football at the bottle if you knock it over the other team has to drink a can of Tuborg between them, but they have only one go at it each, if they fail they forfeit. The forfeits vary from drinking another can or getting a spanking.

The camping at Roskilde is serious, people bring in huge sound systems, lights, lazers the whole shabang. Just walking around the place was like visiting 10 different clubs, they even have their own flyers and names like “Camp Van Damme”, “Invisible Ninja Wizards” and “The Camp Pink Flamingo Sexy Laguna Party Beach“.

Myself and Ken spent one evening playing frisbee between loads of people walking around at camping east. It was really fun seeing the frisbee fly past people, most of them hadn’t a clue, except the ones we hit of course. The frisbee was finally lost in the dark by a Norwegian trying to return it to Ken.

Five more Irish on the way and lots of music to look forward to.

Next Post Roskilde Thursday - Sunday it’s all about the music.

This photo was taken in Markree Castle in Co. Sligo, Ireland. Markree has a wonderful entrance stairway that leads up to the reception. I asked for all the guests to come down from the bar and gather on the stairs and I took a few shots while the guests arranged them selves.

I was really happy with the final staged photo but this version has a different quality to it.

This is one of my girlfriends plates form her Degree course in Ceramics, except more photos of beautifully broken plates in the near future.

Facebook is just another targeted marketing tool, no matter how many times I here about the control users have over the Privacy settings, unscrupulous developers can access account details. They have opened the platform to developers and they don’t check the code and the code doesn’t run from their servers, anyway I decided to delete my profile from Facebook, it’s something that I have meant to do for awhile, I haven’t used the site in months (and even then I was just using Scrabulous).

When you do try a Deactivate your account your given a list of possible options, selecting an option will give you a tip designed to keep you on the site, some of them made me laugh, but having to enter a reason for leaving when selecting ‘Other’ as an option annoyed me, why should I have to give them feedback. Here are some of the options and the corresponding tips.

Facebook is resulting in social drama for me
You can prevent this by learning about how to limit people from accessing your profile.

I spend too much time using Facebook
One way to control your interaction with Facebook is to limit the number of emails you receive from us. You can control what emails you receive here.

Religious symbols dot the Irish Landscape this one is in Dromahair Co Leitrim. I always thought that there was something very English about the village, according to Wikipedia it was modeled on a village in Somerset.

River Walk Hostel, Dromahair, Co Leitrim.

Same door as the one on this post from a few days ago. I had to post this again, I love the colour and randomness of the posters, the pealing paint, the floorboards sticking out under the door and the general decay that has set-in.

This building is located here

It was St Patrick’s day and most people were going to the parade, on these days you guaranteed that people won’t be focused on a lone photographer walking the streets of any Irish town and so it was I had the freedom of the backstreet’s while the scouts and the local theater group had the freedom of the main streets. See where I was. Fourth in a series of photographs exploring the breakdown (the entropy) of all things architectural.

Third in a series of photos of Derelict/Disused/Abandoned/Deserted/Desolate/Forsaken places. This is the former location of Identikit and before that Japan both clothes stores, check out the location here

I love all the layer of paint on the house. Second in a series of photos on the decay and breakdown of former establishments, be they shop, houses, petrol stations or housing estates. This former establishment is located here.

I have been passing by this house for several months, I thought I’d get a photo of it before it’s turned into a Tesco or something equally as soulless.

I know it’s a bit of a strange title of a photo of a bridge. I have been reading a very interesting book about the mathematical search for symmetrical objects, I’ve never been good at Maths, that was more my brothers thing he was great at all aspects of Countdown particularly the numbers round, but the book has very few equations and some very good stories and some interesting explanations. It also offers an insight into the characteristics and motivations of present and past mathematical minds.

Anyway this photo is a a mirror reflection symmetry!

One of the most interesting exhibits at La Biennale di Venezia was a piece on the International Property Rights of the AK-47 Assault Rifle, it was interesting because I didn’t expect the be reading about the AK-47 in a Art Gallery, although in saying that the Art Gallery was actually housed in Arsenale which was a shipyard and naval depot, which seems a little bit more appropriate.

The gun was designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the former USSR, of course if he had of lived in the capitalist western society he’d be a billionaire by now but as it is he’s forced to attach his name to a Vodka.

So who owns the the rights, check out the story of one man’s attempt to find out exactly that.

Myself and my girlfriend went for a drive in our newly acquired car (’97 Mitsubishi Colt) down the cost of Clare. It wasn’t the best day weather wise but I took a few photos at the wind swept beach in Lehinch.

I wanted to try and add a bit of action to a rather dull looking photograph (I do most of my post-production in Aperture). I changed the exposure levels, tinted the white and black points and changed the levels. I like it but with this in mind now I’d like to revisit a beach soon to get some more dramatic shots.

Have a great time

I’ve switched over my blog from the Hemingway Theme to Grain. The Grain template requires the use of Yet Another Photo Blog plug-in which offers functions that are better suited to a Photoblog. For a start, I’ll be able to present more Landscape photos and EXIF data.

The slight drawback of the new system is the fact that I have to manually change all my posts and upload the images again so some of the older posts have yet to be transfered to the new system, I hope to have this completed by Wednesday.

Work has been very hectic since the start of the new year, but I have a week off between St. Patrick’s weekend and Easter, hopefully I’ll have time to get out an take some photos. This time of year is usually a good one for photographs, it’s cold, windy with clear blue skies and we don’t get too much rain and the evenings are getting brighter.

Cold and damp. I hope the effect makes it looks that way. I took this photo on the way to the local Mall while we were staying in Vancouver.

I took this photo at Vicar Street the last time the Flaming Lips played, I didn’t post it at the time but I do like the effect of the screen in the background of the photo.

It was confirmed that one of my photos will be in an upcoming issue of The New Yorker Magazine, that made my day, it was a bad day as well, so it was a bit of great timing. Things were crazy at work, serious amount of pressure and I ending up working 16 hours straight, we got everything done but I don’t want to have to do that again in a hurry.

I took this photo on Christmas Eve, I had all my shopping done and I went for a walk around Sligo, something I don’t get to do very often.

I woke up this morning and for only the second time this year I could cycle to work without the need for my wet gear, Limerick was covered in fog.

This is a shot taken last year, unfortunately I had a long day of work ahead of me, so cycling round with my camera wasn’t an option for today

Music: I’ve been loving Of Montreal recently I haven’t listened to much else in the past few weeks, ‘Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?’ is a great album and so is ‘The Sunlandic Twins’.

Other news: One of my photos might be featured in an upcoming The New Yorker magazine, (fingers crossed)…. and this here blog has been short listed, or is that long listed, for a Irish Blog award (21 other photo blogs in the running).

Well I hope the fog lasts until the weekend, I have a long week of work ahead of me but it will be all worth it if I can get out in the fog at the weekend….

This is one of my fiancés plates for her final year ceramics degree course in Limerick Art College.

She’s working on a full dinner set, but the idea is still developing. I’ll post some more images near the end of the year.