Soirée de poche : Beirut

One of my favourite design blog's to ogle is Kitsune Noir written by Bobby Solomon, not only does it have some of the coolest finds of images and fashion, but there's also some great music on there too.

I was delving through some of the older posts trying to find a video of a specific song, but gave up 14 pages in after finding this great video, by Soirée de poche of Beirut playing live in Paris.

Soirée de poche organise acoustic concerts in apartments with a small audience of around fifty people across Paris. They then film the proceedings with a great sense of intimacy and personal inclusion in the nights events, and you really can't help but want to be there, especially as it sounds so great. Currently they have 14 acts up on their site including Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend and The Walkmen.

Of all of them my favourite has to be Beirut's concert which is below. I only discovered them a couple months ago, and I don't even know how I came across them, but there is something very special about the mix of sounds in the band.

I hope you enjoy the video, and if you like it check out the Soirée de poche site for some more very nice intimate concerts.

A date with the Cranes, Samson & Goliath

I've been planning to spend the day around the dockside taking photo's for quite a bit and finally got round to it on Friday. I say I spent time around the docks but in truth it was spent photographing the cranes of Harland and Wolff.




If you've spent any time in Belfast you can't help but notice the two yellow cranes that dominate the skyline, both belong to the Harland and Wolff shipyard and give an indication to Belfast's previous position as a major ship builder. Individually named after Biblical figures, Samson and Goliath, both cranes have a span of 140 metres and can each lift loads of up to 840 tonnes. Goliath is the older of the two (completed in 1969), stands closer to Belfast and rises to a height of 96 metres, Samson was finished in 1974 has an extra 10 metres in height and is situated on the Belfast Lough side of the ship yard.

The cranes sit on tracks, similar to those used by trains, and can be moved closer or further apart depending on what they are working on, although these days Goliath is pretty much decomissioned and Samson is rarely used. In heavy winds, the cranes were known to be pushed down the rails, even with the brakes on, which must have made life at the top a bit more interesting. The dry dock at the base of the cranes goes hand in hand with their lifting capacity as it is the largest in the world measuring 556m x 93m.

Getting in around the cranes was actually fairly easy, and no climbing of fences was needed to get pretty close to them. A walk down Queen's street, through an abandoned car park and up a fairly unused piece of road (Hamilton Road) past an apparently abandoned warehouse on the left and you are on what Google tells me is Musgrave Channel Road. From here you can get pretty good views of the cranes and at one end only a couple metres from the base of Goliath.

I don't think you are really allowed to be where I was but a good few luminescent jacket wearing people saw me and did nothing but give me a wave. Maybe I looked like I should be there with my tripod and the discarded hard hat I had picked up?

Although they are clearly massive structures, you don't really have a hold of their scale until you are right beside them, they truly are pretty awesome.

As a boy I think everyone wanted to climb them or sit in their cab, something I still hope to achieve. As Goliath gets repainted I can't think of a better job than sitting in a harness hanging off the side of one of the cranes with a bucket of paint.

I didn't have to climb anything to get to where I was taking photos, but had a bit of a clamber to get out. This huge rollered fence wasn't there when I arrived!


With all the development that's taking place in the "Titanic Quarter" its nice to know that the cranes have a preservation order and will always be looking over Belfast.

Hopefully nothing too tall is allowed to go up beside them.

Deeper into exposure

This blog continues to move further into one more focused on photography than the outdoors (who likes to stay in their box anyways?), but I haven't forgotten my roots and there is potential for a couple days away either this week or the next which will hopefully materialise into something.

Instead of a couple nights in the hills I've had to settle with a couple days orienteering here and there, my continued running schedule (which continues to lose out to socialising) and my photography.

So to the photography.

After reading a thread on talk photography about using welding glass stuck on the front of your lens as a 10 stop ND filter, and seeing some of the results, I couldn't not give it a go. Both the "welding shade" and the Kood (Cokin P Fit) filter adapter (to which you add the welding glass) can be picked up from your favourite auction site for a couple of pounds each.

The welding shade is a dark, black looking piece of glass, as one might expect, and casts a green tint across any resulting images. Although you can fix this green tint by adjusting the white balance in Photoshop or whatever processing software you're running, it's obviously best to try and sort it as much in camera if possible. For me this involved using the Olympus "One touch" custom white balance, which took rather more than one try to get to work, but was relatively painless. From what I've read on the thread other camera users should have a similar ability to set a custom white balance, as is shown in this image created by Sean Taylor.

I attached the shade to the filter adapter with some blue-tac and put some insulating tape around the edges as they were a bit sharp and then went off to see the results of adding five pounds worth of glass and aluminium to my camera.

60 seconds F/3.5

120 seconds F/4.7

They're hardly the most inspiring photo's but give an insight into what is possible with a bit of patience and some cheap welding glass, five pounds all in isn't too bad for a bit of fun.

Composing the picture, adding the filter, taking the image and then waiting for the noise reduction to complete all adds up to make quite a time consuming process, but one which definitely looks worth pursuing.

I think the waterfalls might be getting another visit soon.

Long exposures

Top tip for when out taking long exposures - don't hit the tripod and then forget to check the resulting picture, you might end up with a useless shot like this!

Harland & Wolff, Samson