A huge, huge amount of my photo learning has happened on the net; in fact I’ve only read a couple of books, nearly everything else - from what lenses to buy to how to fix dodgy white balance - I’ve picked up thanks to very generous and talented bloggers and photographers providing tutorials, tips, links or simply inspiration.

I trawl though lots of very cool stuff at the weekends and have a nice chunky photography bookmarks folder, filled with sites I go back to again and again as well as random interesting photo tid bits.

So, every now again - I’m hoping for it to be weekly, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves - I’m going to hit the blog up with some nice photo links for you to click, and here’s the first lot:

Photojojo direct you to a cool way to pimp your point and shoot

Midas touch: Really interesting piece on the king of touch-ups, Pascal Dangin (288 retouched pics in the March issue of Vogue alone!)

Vote for Gingerpixel in Canon’s The Assigment

An oldie but a goodie: One of my fave photogs, Emily McCall, gives us a photo tour of her beautiful new house (seven photo-filled posts, all gorgeous)

Via Mulley: chalk-outlined shadows on Flickr

Lilli Forbeg has some v cool shots of Mick Pyro and the rest of those crazy kids from Republic of Loose (how did she fit all of them in?!)

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I’ve gotten to snap some very cute kids these past few weeks; above is the very smart and very adorable Casey.

Next up, , lots of my cousins and of other kids from the circus.

This is my cousin Stephen, in a rare, not-pulling-a-funny-face shot:

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Kourtney, also my cousin, looking cute in her show-time make-up:

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Another cousin, Olivia, who is making her Communion in a few weeks:

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Her little brother JJ, looking cool and solemn:

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And finally, the three boys, hanging out and looking disinterested and cool, as only teen boys can:

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The last two are probably my favourite, just because the light had gotten so lovely by then.

I’ll be keeping my fingers, toes, and eyes crossed in the hope that this Saturday might be as gorgeous as the last so that we can head into Temple Bar again for some market-y fun.

It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve already done it in a given month or how many hung-over hens we have to push our way through: The food market @ Meeting House Square always puts me in a good mood. At this stage, we have a well-worn trail: Make our way in around one-ish, and spend a while admiring the pretty, colourful organic fruit (it’s a bit pricey though):

We then toy with the idea of trying something different - mussels maybe? Some cheese perhaps? But no, we inevitably end up standing in front of the Mexican stall ordering an organic chicken fajita (served with a dollop of very authentic frijoles refritos, guacoamole and salsa, hold the cheese and sour cream please), picking up a big bottle of the cloudy, tangy apple juice and plonking ourselves down wherever we can.

Then, maybe some nice coffee, some fresh veggies or herbs for later (hmmm… much later: just realised that organic rocket is still looking at me guiltily in the fridge; and I feel even guiltier now after reading this) and, finally, a few greedy scoops of chocolate-covered hazelnuts and flakey truffle thingies from Chez Emily.

Yum.

Definitely worth a visit. And while you’re there, pick up some of these:

Blokes in their mid-20s are difficult to buy for, especially ones that are working full-time; anything they need/want, they pretty much buy themselves. So that’s how I ended up getting Eoghan a half day chocolate-making course for his birthday. Plus, his tooth is almost as sweet as mine so I figured he would at least enjoy the eating part!

The workshop is run by Fabulous Food Trails, who do loads of cooking days - Japanese Days, Cocktail Evenings and (the next thing on my hit list) Thai Days - in Dublin as well as food trails throughout the country.
This one was headed up by award-winning chocolatier Benoit Lorge. He makes beautiful artisan chocolates in Bonane, Co Kerry, and runs adult and children’s workshops there too, but this was his first time traveling up to Dubin to give one.
Put simply, it was pots and pots of chocolatey fun. Over a cup of hot chocolate (made on the spot) with cinnamon and orange zest, Benoit talked us through chocolate history - from the ancient Aztecs, who, it’s thought, used cocoa beans as currency, through to Columbus who brought it back to Spain’s royals, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (apparently, they didn’t like it much. It wasn’t until twenty years later, when notorious Spanish conquistador Cortez re-introduced it, this time with sugar and vanilla, that the courts fell head over heels for the stuff, even trying to keep it a secret!).

Benoit then discussed cocoa production today - where most of it comes from, where the good stuff comes from; he even gave us the names and details of chocolate suppliers in Ireland who would probably be willing to sell you small quantities of high quality raw materials like cocoa buttons and cocoa powder.

We then got stuck into some delish chocolate mousse, served with juicy strawberries and a glass of organic Prosecco. Mmmm.

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After that, the fun messy bit got underway - melting chocolate down, tempering it, adding fillings (honey grenache for one and rum for the other), pouring it into moulds. There was lots of messiness, lots of chocolate-stained faces and sticky fingers.

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Benoit is a brilliant chef, really passionate and enthusiastic about what he does - I’ve never met someone so eager for me to eat good chocolate! He points out that even though Ireland has lots of chocolate guzzlers (back in 2006 we had the highest per capita consumption of chocolate in the world and I’m guessing we’re still in the top three), most of us just eat the crap stuff, filled with vegetable oils, milk solids and very few health benefits. He optimistically added that this is very rapidly changing and, thanks to our maturing choccie palate, business for him is booming.

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In between greedily scoffing the chocolate, I managed to take a few pics (you should have seen the state of the poor camera - chocolate finger prints everywhere!):

Thanks to the very lovely Annmarie of IBlogFashion for featuring me in Shutter Speed, the first of her series of posts on photogs. I’m well chuffed

Check out her sartorially clued in site here.

Also worth clicking are the photogs and photographers I mentioned - Gingerpixel, Rymus (here as well) and Philip Pankov.

I read two very different articles about two very different women today, and yet was really struck by the similarities in their stories.

First up was New York magazine’s cover story on 52-year old Zoe Cruz, entitled, They fired the most powerful woman on Wall Street.

Next was Vanity Fair’s interview with 15-year old Disney star Miley Cyrus, published alongside those Annie Leibovitz pictures.

Both women were hugely successful in their fields - Cruz brought in billions for Morgan Stanley, she was the ultimate leap-frogging alpha female; Cyrus has made Disney billions through her kids TV show Hannah Montana, and has two multi-platinum records and a sold out 70 date tour, the ultimate teen sensation.
But now, they’re both in the spotlight having been stripped of their crowns. Cruz was tipped as the next CEO of Morgan Stanley, but was fired last November; Miley has done serious damage to her sweetly innocent Disney image thanks to some candid bra-flashing photos and that sultry Vanity Fair shoot.

They have both been described as having made the same mistake: play the game too well and the game eventually plays you.

These women (can I really call a 15-year old a ‘woman’, even if she is a mega star?) were hugely successful and brought in buckets of money but were under constant scrutiny, with people waiting eagerly for them to mess up.

To quote New York magazine’s Joe Hagan:

“If women across Wall Street viewed Cruz’s firing as a blow, there were men at Morgan Stanley who seemed almost gleeful about it. The woman they had nicknamed the “Czarina,” the “Wicked Witch,” and, most famously, “Cruz Missile” was out of the picture. They joked that it was worth the $9 billion loss to have her gone.”

While Bruce Handy at Vanity Fair notes:

“With Lindsay Lohan rehabbed and Britney Spears under psychiatric care, the tabs are looking to Cyrus to flame out, or at least do something mildly outrageous”. (Ironically, it was that very article - in which she says Sex And The City is her favourite show - and its images that has caused the outrage.)

So now they’re both at the centre of scandal, both played by the game, both feeling hurt and double-crossed; Cruz “feels the way the company laid the blame at her feet—the way Mack [her boss] betrayed her—was unjust” while Cyrus told People: “I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed.”

I guess what interests me most is not the individual stories themselves, but our appetite for and reaction to them. How do women relate to these women? Do we cheer them on, are we indifferent, do we begrudge the success or feel no identification with this breed of super performers?

They both seemed on top of it, hitting their mark, having it all. And now the industry has chewed them up and spat them out. Is it a reflection on how successful women are seen and treated? How they have to behave if they want to win? We know the stereotypes - teen stars are urged to start sexing it up at a younger age if they want to make the transition to adult stardom; female traders know they need need to be ruthless, blunt, ballsy.

Or are these simply sad stories showing the uglier sides of two cut-throat money-grabbing industries? If so, do similar stories involving men grab our attention quite as well?

I’m all questions now, so I think I’ll go and ponder this one for a while.

Turning 26 mainly. And doing so with little grace or added maturity. We threw a house party to mark the occasion and had to have another one the weekend just gone to get rid of the booze we accumulated the first time around (the first two guests both arrived clutching a shoulder of vodky)- A “well done” in passing to Munster for winning through to the H-Cup Final yesterday.

Also going to the gym a lot in the past week or so. I’d always hoped I could live with the insouciance and devil-may-care dissoluteness of Dylan Moran’s character in Black Books but alas I caved under the weight of my long-suffering system’s warning signs and have attempted to better my body. Firstly, the theory…

Now, the practice…

Still it’s early days yet. The marathon wasn’t run in one day as the saying goes.

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Seems like it was only a few weeks ago that I posted pics of my preggers friend Amanda. Although I doubt it feels that recent to her - she’s seven months in now and can’t wait to meet her little kicking friend.
Amanda is tackling her pregnancy with amazing gusto; now that she is on maternity leave, she’s off doing pilates, yoga, aquafit and gym work-outs regularly. I can only dream of being that energetic when my baby bump time comes around, some time in the (very) distant future. Feck that, I can only dream of being that energetic right now.

We decided to do another quick snap session to record her growing bump. I had just read this brilliant tutorial by the excellent photoblogger Natalie Norton about how to take great maternity shots and decided to follow tip number 7: “Give ‘em something different”, where she says:

“Don’t just shoot what’s always been shot. This is a good general rule of photography. I really try to be ‘consistently inconsistent’”

So, I tried a couple of different things - some out of focus shots, cross-processing effects in Photoshop and even a shot of her atop her medicine ball. They’re not the cutesy, romantic shots a lot of mums-to-be would like, but I’m quite happy with how some of these turned out.

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A few more, including the older ones, here.

If you like your fashion with a side of science or something more serious then this is the week for you.

Opening at the TCD Science Gallery (if you’ve haven’t called in yet, go, go go!) is Technothreads, an exhibition about “the creative sparks that fly when the worlds of fashion and science collide”. What to expect? Shirts that hug you, the mathematics of design, 3D fabrics and ‘living’ clothes. Some more:

“The exhibition offers viewers a glimpse into the future of fashion in a world where Biotech and Nanotech are combined with traditional craft and Haute Couture skills. With work from designers such as Walter van Beirendonck, Yoshiki Hishinuma and Freedom of Creation, it promises to show off the most innovative, cutting edge and exciting designers the world has to offer as well as raising issues for global debate, such as the use of tissue culture to produce semi-living clothes.”

It opens on Saturday.

Two nights before Technothreads, on Thurs 24th, Fashion Evolution is happening. It’s a public debate about ethical fashion and it’s taking place at The Button Factory from 6.30pm. Speaking at it will be Katherine Hamnett, the lady behind all those political tees, the most recent of which is “no more fashion victims”. It will be followed by music from the very fab Dirty Epics, Star Little Thing and a few others. Tix , from here, cost €12. Get updates about the goings on by joining the event on Facebook.

And just for the heck of it, here is a shot of Dirty Epics’ frontwoman, Sarah Jane Wai O’Flynn, that I took at the BT2 spring/summer show.

I was working late last Friday and so missed the live coverage of Leinster’s away match in Edinburgh, a match which could have secured the province the Magner’s League. However Setanta showed the match in its entirety in immediate replay so I didn’t follow the score on the web then I ran home and turned on the set and watched the game as if live.

The whole thing was an exercise in frustration against those bloody pillocks who despite their obvious limitations seem to present immense difficulties to Leinster, remember they were the shower who put us out of the Heineken Cup this season.

And with all that Contepomi still had a straightish and short penalty attempt to steal the win with the last kick of the game. Which hit the post. Arrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I like to think Felipe did it so Leinster could secure the title and pick up the trophy at home in front of the RDS crowd on May 3rd against the Dragons. That has to be why. Right?