Alessio Michelini Photography

I was looking forward for this gig, not because I’m a fan of the band, but simply because it was my first gig after a few months (after Biffy Clyro back in Julyto be exact) of break from music photography.
To be clear I didn’t take this break because of my decision, but simply because my collaboration with one of the promoter I’ve been working in the past years has been ended for very, very silly reasons, but to be honest I didn’t miss that much the pit, actually I was able to concentrate more on other things, like my photo project “Commute”, and after a gig like this one it did reinforce this conviction. 
As I said I’m not a big fan of this band, and to be honest in the three songs I was in the pit, I wasn’t entirely sure if they were speaking in english or they were trying to imitate an english version of Sigur Rós’s language, a few moments they sounded to me like a cat with a big stomachache, but apart from the lyrics, the band weren’t that bad. In fact what was bad were the lights. For the first two songs you can sum the performance with: red lights - completely dark - red lights - dark - strobes with red lights - dark - red lights - strobes - repeat.

I know, I know, I did write only one post last month, shame on me! But it has been an odd month for me. Unfortunately I had to find a new job as the company I've been working for the past 6 and half years closed down, so I had to concentrate to find a new job soon, then I had a long pile of photos to develop, mostly the ones I took in Iceland, and a photoshoot I had to do for an argentinian artists (which I'm going to talk soon). I had to skip my monthly appointment in august because apart from the photos I took in Iceland, I didn't shoot anything else that month, and I'm going to publish the pictures I took on my trip on a specific post, when I'll find the time to write it, as it's going to be a looooong one (I shot about 5500 photos in two weeks!).
Anyway, for September I've some new random photos, and some of them are part of my photo project "Commute" which I wrote about previously, and now I've create a specific section on my brand new website for that specific project.
Down here you can see some of the best photos I took in September, and as usual feel free to leave any comments/critiques or even to say "Hello" or "Ciao" :-)

I've been working on this personal photography project from a while now, about 5 months now, and in this time I always brought my trusty mirrorless camera with me, and I've photographed to the people who, like me, commute everyday to work/college/pub/anythingelse and back with the train/luas/buses in Dublin.
At the moment I'm writing I've already took almost 200 pictures, which can be viewed on this set on my flickr account, which show a silent population made of people who mostly travel back and forth to the same place, every workday, people that spend most of their trip tapping on a phone, socializing with their "friends" on Facebook or Twitter, while they isolate themselves from the people around them. It's a slice of modern life at the end, even if it's a bit sad on my opinion.
As I said, I shot this project entirely with the Fuji X-E1, a camera that it's perfect for this job as people don't get scared by the size of it as it would happen if I go around with a big DSLR with big lenses, and actually they think is an old film camera, and this with the fact that I always look like a tourist, it helps me a lot. Also a good 95% where all made with couple of vintage manual lenses, while the rest have been done with the new Samyang 12mm f/2 NCS CS I bought a couple of months ago. While manual focusing on a train full of people it's not exactly the easiest thing in the world, once I got the grip on it, it becomes natural, and as I said before, it slows you down, and it gives you more time to think and to compose the shot. It forces you to do what a photographer should do before taking any shot, to observe the world around you.

Anyway, down here you can find some of the best shot I've done for this project so far, I hope you like them and as usual if you have any comments/critiques/whatever, please leave a message in the disqus box at the end of the page!
Thanks

I always thought it was a lack of a functionality the fact that everytime I've uploaded my photos on my flickr account it was leaving behind the GPS coordinates, which most of the times it's not a problem because I don't use often the GPS of my Canon 6D, but the times I use it, like when I travel around Ireland or abroad, I really want to share the position of my photos, because it's easier for me to remember where I took that specific photo, but also for other photographers who are looking for locations to photograph.
And in the past days I've been uploading my photos of my recent trip in Iceland, and I couldn't understand why once I've uploaded the photos on flickr, the GPS data, which I can easily see on Adobe Lightroom, are lost on the upload process.
Until tonite. There's no lack of any functionality, it's all there, it's just disabled by default, and all you need to do is to check two things: the first one is if Lightroom is exporting the GPS coordinates in the Exif data of your photos, and the second one is to check if Flickr is reading this information when it uploads the photos on the server.
So, for to check the first step, you need to go to your Export window in Adobe Lightroom, under the Metadata section, and be sure that the option "Remove Location Info" is NOT ticked!

If this option is not selected, it means that everytime you export a photo with that settings, is going to save the GPS coordinates in the Exif data of your photos.

The next step is to check if Flickr is reading this information. So now you need to login into your flickr account, go to your account settings, and then go to the "Privacy & Permissions" tab, and under the section "Defaults for new uploads" you need to check if the option "Import EXIF location data" is set to Yes, otherwise the GPS information will be lost at the moment you upload a photo.

Bear in mind that this will not enable the GPS information for the photos you previously uploaded on your flickr account, but only from the moment you enable this functionality, if you want to set the coordinates for the photos you already uploaded you can only do it by using the flickr organize tool.

Using Seth MacFarlane's voice I have to say "Sorry, sorry, sorry...", so sorry guys for this very late post, but in the past month I've been two weeks in Iceland, with nearly no internet for most of the time, then a week in Italy with almost no will to do anything apart getting roasted at the beach, and then a week back here in Dublin, where I have to come back to reality (unfortunately). In the next days hopefully I'll post about my trip to Iceland, which it has been pretty awesome and I've seen one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
But, even if the August is nearly at its end, I still have to post the photos I took back in July.
I'll take out the ones I took in Copenhagen, and the ones I took in Iceland for obvious reasons, but it still was a pretty busy month, I did shot loads of photos in the streets and for my personal project "Commute" - which I'm going to talk about on a separated post in the near future - and down here you can find some of the best, while here on flickr you can find the full set.
Thanks for reading (and watching)!

I wanted an ultra wide lens since I bought my little Fuji X-E1, the kit lens was a good lens overall, and while for street photography it’s definitely a great lens, for landscapes 18mm (equivalent to a 27mm on a 35mm) are not enough to me, I always felt like it was too long for me. So three weeks ago I decided to sell it in favour of a new ultra wide lens from the Korean manifacturer Samyang (or Rokinon in the States, Walimex somewhere else), the 12mm f/2 NCS CS.
I generally read thousands of review before buying a lens, but in this case I couldn’t find much as this lens came out on the market just a few months ago, but the few reviews I found were all very positive, and I often read good things about Samyang lenses, so I decided to give it a try.

I’ve always been a big fan of scandinavian countries, back in 1994 I was supporting Sweden at the World Cup (I still remember some players’ name). In 2007 I visited Stockholm, it was a great trip despite the fact it was freaking  cold, and it was May! Next week I’m going for a two weeks trip to another of the 5 scandinavian countries, Iceland.

But 5 years ago I bought the Lonely Planet Guide of Denmark, not because I was planning to go anytime soon to that country, but just because I knew one day I will. 
And that day arrived a couple of weeks ago, finally my first trip to Copenhagen! I didn’t really know what to expect apart from Lego and extremely beautiful people, I always heard different opinions about that city, somebody loves it, somebody else hates it. So far the closest encounter with that city was the airport back on May, but we did have only a couple of hours in between our flight connection, so we couldn’t really go anywhere, and you can’t judge a nation by just its airport, even if it might give you a rough idea about basic things, like the cost of the life.

This scottish trio is one of the bands that will never delude you, one of those you already know is going to make a great show right from the moment you buy the tickets, even if don't like them that much, even if you think their last album is terrible (and I'm not one of them), even if you think they became too popular, you know it's a band to see. And even this time they didn't disappoint their fans, as they have done another great show in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
And as you can easily get from my previous statements, as a photographer is pure pleausure to photograph Biffy Clyro, even if it's a big stage and it's not as easy to get a clear shot without including a part of the stage or a speaker, and despite here in Ireland you have sunlight until 10.30 in the evening in July, it's still a great band to photograph.
Lightwise was similar to their supporter band, where the sunlight is the key light, and I was confortably shooting at ISO 400, something that doesn't happen frequently, and it definitely never happens in a indoor gig. Because the sun started to be lower down on the horizon we got a very warm light, and the stage lights were a little bit more presents on the scene, even if not that significant as they supposed to be.
Simon Neil in the past was a bit more complicated to photograph due to a bigger stage, and this time was a bit more constricted on the stage, but he still moves a lot, but at least this time I didn't have to run like Speedy Gonzales in the pit.
So, great band to see and photograph, and down here I've posted some of the best photos I took that day, while here you can find the full set.

Don't worry guys, I didn't forget my monthly appointment, and I have to say that I had a very productive month, I took pictures almost every day, which is a record for me, maybe because I don't have many gigs this month, actually I just had two gigs this month, Biffy Clyro and Deaf Havana, but while the first one was great, the second one was awful to photograph, as I had to shoot in the Academy 2 and the few photos I took there were terrible and I'm not going to publish them. Anyway, lots of pictures anyway, especially because I'm working hard for my personal photography project called "Commute" which I'm going to post all the details in the next few weeks, but you will see some of the photos down here alongside the other ones.

Next month I'm going to have some more "exotic" pictures as tonite I'm going to Copenhagen, Denmark, for the weekend, with my girlfriend and a friend of mine, and I'm really excited about it, as I wanted to visit this city from a long time, so long that I bought the lonely planet guide back in 2009 and finally I can use it!

But because I'm probably going again there next year as my friend is probably going to move there for a year, I decided to travel light and I'm leaving my DSLR at home, and I'm going to bring my little Fuji X-E1 with three tiny lenses, the Canon FD 50mm f/1.4, the Canon FDn 28mm f/2.8 and the new entry in the family, the Samyang 12mm f/2 NCS CS which I'm going to test it during the weekend, hopefully I'll get some good shots!

Anyway, down here some of the best shots I took last month, some from Dublin, some from Dalkey and some others from Greystones.

Finally after months of abstention from shopping, today I decided to go to my trusty shop close to my office, Conns Cameras, and to "invest" some money on new equipment, and in particular I bought a new backpack for my camera and a new lens for my little Fuji X-E1.

The backpack in question is the Lowepro Pro Runner 450 AW, which is going to replace my old and not in very good conditions Lowepro Computrekker AW I used in the past 7/8 years. And when I went to the shop I already knew what kind of backpack I need: something that I can fit my DSRL and 5 lenses, some filters, a laptop + charger, and plenty of accessories like extra batteries, remote trigger, flashes, etc... So I didnt' really wanted anything smaller than my current backpack, but at the same time it had to fit the Ryanair hand baggage sizes. If you live outside Europe and you don't know how much Ryanair is strict with baggages, I can simply explain with four words: pain in the arse. Actually five words: BIG pain in the arse. So the Lowepro Pro Runner 450 AW was perfect for me, it's essentially the newer version of my bag, with the difference that it's a few centimeters deeper, which it gives me some more space for my longer lenses. Anyway hopefully I'll do a proper review of this bag in the near future, maybe next week when I'll be back from my trip to Copenhagen.