[Photographer Profile] #1 DaireQuinlan

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The idea of these threads is to give some insight as to how some of your fellow photographers operate. Each person invited will write about their photography and provide some examples. This thread will be sticky for about a fortnight (longer if needed) During this time feel free to comment and ask questions. Please allow the subject to answer questions and do not do so on their behalf.

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Hi. My name is Daire Quinlan. I take photographs.
I'd claim that I could stop anytime I wanted, but I'd be lying. If I'm out and about without a camera I start feeling nervous and twitchy, don't quite know what to do with my hands. I keep a compact or two in my bag for situations like that. Does anyone else do that ?

Regardless, somehow none of this compulsive shooting has actually enabled me to become the next Frank Herzog or Stephen Shore. Imagine. Maybe I don't take the whole process seriously enough. I simultaneously disregard the advice of others, or at least the advice I don't agree with, and worry constantly that I actually can't take photographs to save my life. I favour a style that's been variously (and, lets face it, probably truthfully) described as 'banal fail' and 'yellowing laundromat' but I keep on doing it anyway.

So yeah, compulsive shooting, that's one side of the coin. I like street furniture, distinct little groupings of elements, incongruities in an otherwise seamless pattern, some colour contrast that pops out of the scene a little. I'd like to be a little more abstract but I don't think I have it in me. I'd like to shoot B&W but I really don't have the head for it, so I confine my B&W mainly to portraits.

Flipside is the ongoing documentary entitled "The first one then two how did that happen cutest kids in the world" from the first polaroids on up. One caveat to this is the amount of off the cuff candid shots I used to do which have gradually been replaced more and more by posed shots. Mostly for practical reasons, and the fact that both of them have become annoyingly camera-aware. It's a trend I want to reverse though.

Film. I just like it. I like that there's an imprint of that moment on an actual physical medium. An imprint that's a direct analog to the actual photons that bounced off of or were emitted by the subject and hit the film at that same moment. I like how it looks. I like being able to screw with development and see what happens. I like the limitations of having a particular film loaded and knowing that there's simply no point in taking a particular shot so I can just savour the moment instead. I like that instead of a incomprehensible technological tool that's merely to be used, film opens itself out as a beautifully simple process that can be explored and expanded on. Plus, on top of everything else, I like the smell.

I guess these shots are representative to some extent of how I photograph when I'm out and about. Little vignettes , small splashes of colour, geometrical arrangements...










Other Inclusions

These are results of experimentations, constructions, extrapolations. The first two probably the best results of an 8x10 camera I built to shoot paper negatives in




This last isn't really a particular good shot, but is probably the most left field I got. It's RA4 colour paper exposed as a paper negative in the above 8x10 and then reversal processed so it comes out of the soup as a positive print. Bit of a wayward and awkward process. Having a second kid put paid to these experimentations... at least for a while ...


And of course (with that neat segue) documenting my kids lives so far, from this ...

.....

To their first day at school / creche respectively

.....

via this

and this

And, of course, this



D.