…is the one you have with you. It’s an old saying but I find it’s very true.

I bought a Canon HDSLR with the idea of using it for video and photography but I’ve ended up concentrating on video because of the beautiful results. This means my go-to picture camera is the one I have with me, my iPhone 3gs.

Some of my favourite pictures recently have been the ones I’ve taken with my phone, like the ones below. The combination of a reasonable quality camera, that’s always in your pocket, with an easy and effective editing app, can’t be beat.

It’s the same for a lot people, most have a ‘good’ camera that sits in a drawer, battery half charged and only ever brought out for special occasions. But it’s our camera phones that are capturing those spontaneous moments, every day, that we weren’t expecting.

Eventually I put the camera down and started to edit. Here’s the end result, it’s a bit rough and ready but that’s life in the Big Apple I guess.

Turn up the volume on this one for the beautiful song ‘We Don’t Eat’ by Irishman James Vincent McMorrow.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When it came to shooting my final year film for college I wanted to get a grasp on all this. But the more I got into it the more the documentary was becoming just as much about Irish society and its voices.

I mean, just what is the right way to announce a death notice?
How would you keep the bidding at a cattle auction interesting?
What’s the best approach to shifting 30 units of housing in 30 seconds of radio ad time?
And why shouldn’t you sound too excited as a sports commentator if your local team score a goal in the first 10 minutes?

I’m reworking the documentary at the moment and polishing it up, with grading yet to be done.

Here’s a clip from it with thanks to Suzana Zalokar for her camera work.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I digitized the company’s previous shows and movies, reviewed and edited them into clips and posted them on Apostle’s social media pages via whosay.com. I also helped with their new website, gathering video and other media for it.

The biggest edit project I undertook there was reworking the narrative of its 5-episode Comedy Central show Contest Searchlight to suit a ‘webisode’ format.

It’s now ‘airing’ on the Comedy Central site Atom.com, click here for the Contest Searchlight channel and the webisodes.

Or see the first episode here on Apostle’s vimeo page:

Click here to view the embedded video.

apostlenyc.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

modernvintagerecordings.com

As we moved into production I was given the role of Production Co-Ordinator where I was responsible for the organization of the talent, crew and location for the particular shoots. I also worked as a camerman on the episode below, capturing Emma as she ran in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With thanks to Athena Media

athenamedia.ie

vimeo.com/athenamedia/videos

The two things that stand out the most for me are the camera’s low light performance which means you can capture night scenes as you see them. I’ve written about this before but it’s great to have this performance in such an unassuming camera. Then there’s the crazy weather! Stifling humidity and frightening thunderstorms. Bring on September.

However, instead of a time-lapse showing people scurrying about the place, I wanted to show the earth itself rotating, because when everyone is done moving for the day and stationary at home in bed, the world continues to spin.

Digital cameras make it easier to do these slow-shutter lapses, so I pointed my camera at the clock tower of the Kilkenny Design Centre and then directly across the road to the entrance gate of the castle itself. Photography like this is slow, it can take an hour to get enough pictures to make 5 seconds of video and that’s why the clip is so short.

To break it down, depending on the time-lapse picture you’re capturing, it can take up to 30 seconds to get one picture (you leave the shutter open for 30 seconds to let enough light in to capture the stars). In turn, it takes 25-30 pictures to make 1 second of video.

I was lucky last night. The redesign of the area outside Kilkenny Castle means the harsh orange street lights that usually populate urban areas, and drown out our view of the stars, have been removed in favour of more subtle lighting. While that helped, the subtle lighting then shut off shortly after midnight. Whether that was for energy saving reasons (which I applaud) or whether they went on the blink (which wouldn’t surprise me!) the area was left covered by moonlight which was unusual but perfect!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.