Still browsing through the archive of thousands of images that never made the blog and found this! why oh why had I never put this photo up. Thats right I am teaching her early I tell you, now if only I could get her to look though the viewfinder, hmmm…..

Oh my god its been so long folks! not only that I have not had the camera out for ages, so I had to dig through the archives but I did find this little gem of a photo!

Hopefully in this cold weather it can remind you that spring is not that far away again!

Well I decided to put up another image from the last photowalk I was on, this was the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk that took place a while ago. Why go back through my archives?

Well since doing this photowalk brought to my attention by Darren Greene, I have met a load of great photographers both here in Ireland but more so through Twitter. I put up a few of my images on a flickr group page and it opened up new doors to me. Firstly I got followed by @Napp_News which is the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, and then by a load of Napp Members, all except Scott Kelby himself!

These people have been a great source of knowledge to me in relation to my photography, but have also become very good friends since August! so tonight I decided to repay the favour and join up to Napp myself, and what a great deal they have for 99 Dollars you get a years membership with monthly magazines but the main thing for me is the website and the amount of valuable information available to members like tutorials, discounts etc, I can see myself being there for quite a long time trawling through everything.

If you want to join up click here and that will bring you through to the registration page, or if you want any information about the site just ask me on twitter.

Well its been ages since I posted, and I was so looking forward to getting a good picture of Rebecca in her halloween outfit, but do you think she would stand still, god no excitement was just to much, so sorry for the blur, although I think it actually helps with the ethereal feel of the picture.

Well last years pretty pink witch outfit did not fit, so we had to get a new costume and Paulas sister came to the rescue with a tutu and we had some wings my mother had given us ages ago, so blend the 2 together and you get in Rebeccas word a fairy princess or sometimes when she was asked what she was dressing up as she would reply “a lady”, god I love the way 2 year olds think at times.

The Second of Sika Deer photos from Glenroe Farm, this time up close and personal, very personal, so much so you can see me reflected in this deers eyes, and what fantastic eyes these deer have.

So next up for my animal shots, is one of a Sika Deer, these deer were the highlight of my trip to Glenroe Farm whats not to love about deer.

It was also fantastic to be able to get up so close to them without freaking them out, I have so many shots of them that I am nervous of going post crazy with them, so I ask you to let me know if you want to see some more bambi shots?

Today Paula, Rebecca and myself decided to go somewhere we have been meaning to go to for ages, Glenroe Farm. Just outside Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow its a great place to bring the little un’s.

All sorts of farmyard animals we are so fond of singing to Rebecca, in old McDonald had a farm, came to life for her today, with cows, sheep, horses, chickens, rabbits, geese, goats you get my drift, Of course I love doing the pig sounds while singing that song so a picture of one was welcomed.

The other great thing about this photograph is the fact that recently I have been getting a lot of stick about being a lazy pig myself so in years to come I can look at this shot and remember the good times!

Alan O’Flaherty has put together a great website called “What would God say” in aid of The Childrens Sunshine Home, its a really simple idea and I do wish Alan the best of luck with it, click here to let Alan explain himself where the idea stemmed from.

Video streaming to the internet from your mobile telephone through 3G or WiFi, this cant be real, but yes the guys at Qik have this sorted. It has been around for quite some time now, but I decided to give it a shot towards the end of last week and it works a dream.

On the photography front I was hit with this link from Debz of her daughter after a bit of an incident, is this what awaits me with Rebecca? Absolute class!

This is probably the last picture I am going to put up from the Irish Web Awards since I took feck all pictures, this one though I felt I had to put up.

SiliconRepublic won the best technology site category and I was thrilled for them. The webpage is somewhere I find myself going to on a daily basis to learn all about whats happening in Irish technology news so I can keep upto date, and it makes talking to some of my twitter followers a lot easier, since I am not as techy as them!

Pictured is Marie Boran and John Kennedy accepting their award, Marie was also the woman who wrote the blog digest of this site only a week or 2 ago, and it was great to meet up with her on the night and thank her for that.

So normal service can resume, last week blogging was least of my priorities as the first Irish Web Awards were being held yesterday and Damien Mulley the man above kindly asked if I would be able to help out with the videos for the night. I of course was thrilled to have been asked and jumped at the opportunity.

The only thing was I had to get them all done in a week, which was a good bit of pressure but to be honest thats exactly how I prefer to work. Anyhow got all the work done and went to the event last night and what a great night was had by everyone. Damien once again proved to be an expert in organising the evening, I think this is his 4th big do, and with each one they just keep getting better and better.

My good mate Rick O Shea was, as always, fantastic entertainment as MC and a fair play to all the guys behind the scenes helping Damien out, they helped make the night just flow perfectly. I also got to meet a lot of people I have known for a long time on Twitter but up to last night, had never met. I could go through all the names and give the link love but to be honest this post would just look silly, with the amount of people, but you guys know who you are!

One other thing I was looking forward to doing was Qik’ing the event as much as I could, this I did with some results, but at one stage I was holding my iPhone aloft for 30 minutes streaming like crazy and when I got home today I noticed that only 2 minutes had gone live, this has really annoyed me as I could have been taking more photos instead.

Anyhow many many thanks to Damien for a fantastic night, I will wait and see if he will trust me to do anything for the blog awards after last nights DVD disaster (less said about that the better) but I hope he may keep me in mind to do it!

UPDATE : Alexia has captured lots of video from the night thank god after my qik mess. Peter Donegan has put up a shed load of pictures, and the near DVD disaster is fully explained by the man himself Damien, with a hilarious video, pity I was out having a smoke and missed this on the night!

Another one of my fave shots from the golf course, it was amazing to see this sunset going behind the Killeshin hills. The cloud line also was amazing.

Oh dear what a bad bad blogger I have been, but this whole economic mayhem has been entertaining me like I don’t know what, also in all honesty last week I had my fathers 60th and my mothers birthday too, a tweetup with some fantastic people, more on that in a post or 2 and general madness.

As I said my father hit the great age of 60 last week and to celebrate we went to Carlow over the weekend and myself my 2 brothers and my future brother in law Tom brought him for a game of golf. I have not played for at least 10 years so to put it mildly I was terrible.

Thankfully I did bring the camera and this was one of my last shots from the day of a dead tree found at the 18th tee box, I am thrilled at how this turned out and it made up for my crap golfing.

I have gone for a very soft looking photograph today, I dunno why, I suppose its the weekend and I feel great.

I am also pleased to announce that I have decided to take my copyrighting a bit more seriously now on mcawilliams.com, and as of tonight all images, past and future, will be watermarked. I have taken this step due to the fact that I have always said if someone wants an image, once its not for commercial use ie. a personal blog etc, you are more then welcome to it once you let me know and also dont do the silly thing of hotlinking to my images.

Well this has fallen on many a deaf ear and so things have to change, watermarking is step number one, behind the scenes myself and my hosts are going to work on the images that have been hotlinked already.

Thursday Twitter question time did happen, but I wont be posting it up until tomorrow, mainly due to the fact that tonight I celebrate my last day been married for 4 years, yep tomorrow I celebrate 5 years been married to Paula.

What an amazing 5 years we have had as a married couple, so much has happened in particular the addition to our family of my other favorite girl Rebecca.

So I found this photo of my 2 favorite women in my life and want to say thanks to Paula for putting up with me for so long and making me such a happy dude.

I obviously did not take this photo, it was taken by one of my brothers, which I dont know, but I had to put it up, as the majority of self portrait shots I have taken have had a beard included.

Anyhow here is I shaven!

So time for a picture I think, last week my little baby sister got engaged to her long time boyfriend Tom, I am so thrilled for them both! Over the weekend they had a party in their house in Portlaoise to celebrate it.

I decided to take pictures throughout the night to create my first blurb photo book for them as a present, I think I have that almost perfected, but I just had to get one shot of my sister up on the blog in the meantime.

So fair play Tom welcome to the clan etc and thanks to both of you for a great great night.

So its the start of a new week and I am happier in myself, unfortunately Rebecca has come down with something weird which if is not improved by 7am tomorrow will mean she will have to head to the doctors.

So in light of the happier me here is a lovely picture of a yellow rose.

Well Thank god this week is only 1 hour 30 minutes away from ending as I write this post. I have had a shit week in every aspect of the word shit, so what better way to end it with another dark broody photograph, the kind I seem to be enjoying more and more these days, of myself.

I very seldom do self portraits, but I just liked the framing in this.

On another note my mental amount of twittering has not gone unnoticed with LeCraic taking the almighty mickey out of my Tweeting fetish, fair play, great post all round!

Tonight I did the hardest thing ever and left the group blog I have been writing on since its conception in June last year. The guys at forninepounds have been such a fantastic bunch to get to know and I will, I promise keep in touch with every single one of you.

To cheer me up I went and found a photo I had feck all processing to do on, cause I really was not in the mood to spend long fixing images, and I love how this turned out all grungy and dark yet with youth and fun mixed in aswell.

Strange thing is looking at the image, I can a resemblance on Rebeccas face, of my face as I pushed the publish button on the post over there, that sad look that I can pull off, I am seriously down in the dump now.

Well what a weekend I have had, everything I did was camera friendly, even more friendly if dumb ass here remembered to take the bleeding thing.

Saturday was spent in town, mainly to pop up to see the Peoples Photography exhibition that was on around Stephens Green. Darren Greene was there as was Treasa and many others from the Boards.ie group, I had planned on doing it, but due to the building works we got done I never got around to it.

Today we decided a trip to Dublin Zoo was the order of the day and we had a great time. Rebecca is understanding what the zoo is about so much better then October last year. Not only that the animals were all out struting their stuff, so it was brilliant to see them in all their splendour. Also the amount of babies the zoo has managed to have, is outstanding and its great to see the work they are doing for conservation working out so well.

Anyhow as I said I forgot my camera both days so I am shit!

So here is a photograph I took up in Powerscourt House and Gardens a few weeks ago of a beautiful white water lily.

I hope you are not getting sick of these photographs from my weekend walk, I am nearing an end honestly.

I love this photo though, even in times of recession, the building works continue, but the question is will these properties sell?

I have no idea if this was purposely put on the glass, or if its from one of the many new age graffiti artists around, all I know is it really works well.

I have no idea how I even spotted this scene, as myself Gingerpixel and Redmum were walking up to grand canal dock, we passed a bus stop and in the gap between it and the wall was some sort of Chinese left overs, I have no idea why it was left in this small gap except that it may have been a homeless person getting shelter from the elements.

Yesterday I had the pleasure on going on a fantastic little photowalk around Dublin. Fantastic because I went to places I have been too loads of times, this time I had my camera with me!

Scott Kelby, a guru of all that is photoshop, organised this photowalk to take part in 100’s of different cities across the world on August 23rd, making it the largest gathering of photographers for one photowalk, quite an achievement. In Dublin the turnout was great with many stories and techniques discussed aswell as much lens and camera envy.

One place I have never taken pictures was Windmill Lane, where U2 recorded quite a lot of their music, and of course the Graffiti Wall. Every time you go down the wall has changed, its almost like the wall is living and evolving.

I really liked this photo though mainly because of the lines “Your hate make me Stronger” and the fact that underneath is Redmum who has not got a hateful bone in her body.

It was also great to hang out with another 2 fantasic Photobloggers Darren Greene who told us of the event on twitter and Gingerpixel who accompanied me on the worst known mode of transport, the Dart. It was also lovely meeting so many of the photographers from Boards.ie

The other amazing thing about the day is the amount of pictures that I took that are worthy of blogging, I am well chuffed and will keep posting them this week.

I received a phone call at 8.20 this morning saying a big package had arrived for me, I knew exactly what it was. Not a 5D from any of my blogging friends, not a new laptop from my twitter pals, this was something much more important to me.

A good while back I took a photograph of a rhino at Dublin Zoo. Not only has it got a lot of hits through google but because of it, an email arrived from Donna after leaving a comment on the post.

Donna’s initial comment left me a bit puzzled “Would it be possible to paint this picture, please could you reply via email”. I answered via email to find out what she meant. She left a second post explaining a bit more what she was planning, and I liked the idea. Basically the art class she was in would use it as a subject for their painting class. I sent Donna a full resolution version of the photograph to hopefully make their lives a bit easier.

We kept in touch with a few more mails over the past few months, finding out how people were getting along with my picture, I got a surprise when Donna sent me a photo of the oil painting she was doing, it looked amazing saying “This is my trial painting at half way stage . I am then going on to do it on a large scale. As a group we would like to thank you for your picture, the group are all going to paint in different mediums.”.

A trial painting!!! you gotta be kidding me it looked fantastic. She then told me that she would post me a finished version of the oil painting, I could not believe it. I promptly sent Donna my address awaiting the package, which arrived today and the picture you see above is what I had the greatest pleasure unwrapping.

Donna I can’t thank you enough for this painting, it will find a special place in the house to be hung up, and to everyone else at the Art Class in Chesterfield, you have no idea how proud you have made a very amateur photographer feel, by using one of my photos.

Thank you.

Normal service has resumed, but honestly a lot of good has come from that last post. Once I know more I will be sure to post up about it.

Anyhow another shot from my day at Powerscourt, this time down at the rose bushes they have, I hate roses but the scent of these guys was incredible, so strong and so nice. I was thrilled to be able to take a photo of a rose without greenfly or any major blemishes. Pity I had to go and desaturate it and make it all dark and gloomy then.

Ah well I like the shot, not to sure about my wanky name for the post though.

While on holidays other then Wexford, we also decided to go for a trip down the road to Powerscourt Gardens, like Glendalough, Powerscourt is a place you cant tire of, the gardens are beautiful and the place is huge.

While in the Japanese part of the gardens I spotted a Damsel Fly sitting on the leave of a bamboo beside a little lake. I love the way these guys sit there with a big camera only an inch or 2 away and they are unfazed by it all.

So I am proud to announce the first installment of “Opening the shutter”

So what have I found this week -

Top of the list goes to Damien Mulley who has proudly announced the first Irish Web Awards on October 11th, hopefully I may be playing a small role in helping him out again with this one, more on that as it happens.

The second thing that caught my Shutter was Nick (DownsDad) from Our Jacob. I know Nick quite well and was appalled with what he was writing about in the last few posts he put up. They all relate to the Ben Stiller movie Tropic Thunder
and the fact on how the script, co written by Stiller, uses the word retard or retarded quite a bit throughout. In Nicks words he wonders had..

it never occurred to him that he was training a bazooka on an incredibly large gathering of relatively helpless people? I can’t believe that. He’s a funny guy, he plays to his strengths, he’s not afraid to be unpopular, but I cannot remember him ever going out of his way to deliberately target or hurt people who are already at several disadvantages: physically; mentally; within society at large; financially, and on and on.

Today it hit the airwaves on Newstalk 106, I missed the show but I plan on listening to the podcast when I get home.

According to SiliconRepublic it seems our friends at Intel plan to speed things up a bit more with a serious push to get USB 3.0 out, which will be 10 times quicker then USB 2 which we are so used too, bring it on.

In times of recession when suppliers should be hungry for custom this appears from Alexia and her really bad treatment last Saturday while attempting to buy an elusive 3G iPhone (which were in the store) but been unable to, due to a system malfunction that stopped sales for any bill pay custom and it lasted all day, how many customers did O2 manage to lose to Vodafone/Meteor/3 that day?

Update : Sources tell me that this still did not deter Alexia from purchasing one today!

And I suppose if I have to keep the idea of a photoblog going I should link to another photoblog so this week I am linking to Kari Pullinen from My Left Eye and a photo that was put up yesterday but taken last year in Gori, which obviously everyone knows is under serious attack from the Russians. Amazing photo compared to the pictures we see in the media these days.

And so ends my first “Opening the Shutter” I do hope you may have found something you may also have enjoyed.

So I am back with the SLR again, even though the last photo I put up from the iPhone is a great capture of Rebecca, the iPhone camera really aint much.

So while on holidays down in Wexford we decided to go the the Irish National Heritage Park again in Ferrycarrig. We were there last year and really enjoyed our day there so why not go again, this time Rebecca could run about and explore, and she loved it. While waiting for her to come out of one of the many houses that are scattered around the park a robin decided to fly down to rest on a wooden post.

I love robins their song and the fact they are so friendly to people meant I could not resist taking a snap or 2 of him.

So here it is my first iPhone photo entry, yes that’s right I got myself an iPhone. It was a hard ordeal to get one due to the shortages about, but by following a delivery van on Friday around the Grafton Street area I was able to get into the Carphone Warehouse in Saint Stephens Green shopping centre and nab myself a 16 gig white 3G iPhone, out of the 3 they got in.

Now I did not buy the iPhone for the camera, I have my SLR for that, and thank god that’s the case, if I had anything at all to complain about with the iPhone it would be the 2mp camera. My Nokia E65 had a 2mp camera yet the photos from it were a lot better. But in relation to the other capabilities of the phone I am amazed at what it can do.

So here is Rebecca bouncing like a good thing on the Bouncy Castles down on Bray seafront.