Avril's Birthday - Event Photographer Cork / June 13, 2023 by Jan

Happy Birthday!

Celebrating Avril’s birthday was a big occasion, and her partner, Stephen, pulled out all the stops! Booking ‘The Mirror Room’ at the River Lee Hotel, just above their ‘Lookout Room’. It’s located right on the river Lee with it’s own balcony and huge windows letting in so much sunlight. A gorgeous spot! Decorated really nicely as well.

This is my best attempt at a paparazzi shot of the couple walking into the venue!

Now we won’t say which birthday Avril was celebrating, but check out this beautiful ‘Happy Birthday’ flower wall. We had a lot of fun using this as a backdrop for some fun group photos, and even a little couple shoot, which poor Avril and Stephen had to do in front of all their friends. It would come to no surprise that there was a good amount of heckling coming from the crowd! But they soldiered on and did a fantastic job!

To cover the entertainment side of things, we had a pair of singers belting out some amazing tunes and a magician who was mystifying groups of guests with his tricks. I still can’t figure out where those coins came from or went to!

Having the magician there was a really fun intro for everyone to get comfortable and skip the formal hellos. It was a great idea to have him there and had all guests so engaged with his act. Well done to him!

Dancing the Night Away

But finally we get to my favourite part of the night! The dancing! As you can probably tell from these photos, I had a lot of fun photographing these ‘action’ shots. With this heavier editing style, I was going for a really specific look. These photos clearly look very different to the very clean and vibrant photos from the beginning of the night. I wouldn’t do this style with necessarily every group, but everyone here was so fun and in such a party mood, that I was confident it was appropriate.

My Favourites

Out of all the dancing photos, the shots of Avril and Stephen dancing together are my favourites. They look so intimate at times, as if they’re the only two people in the world. I love that vibe that these photos give off. Very cute!

This is a great time to congratulate Stephen for stepping out of his comfort zone to dance, which he wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t have “encouraged” him to go on the dance floor for this photo opportunity. Haha!

A long night of good company, drink, food and dancing and singing. What more could you want? A very successful night!

If you would like to book me to photograph your event, say hello here and we can chat about pricing and availability and all about your event plans!

And if you’d prefer a portrait shoot instead, I also offer the following types of photography:

• Couples Photography in Cork

• Wedding Photography in Cork

• Family Portrait Photography in Cork

• and more!

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Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 DG DN Art FE Review with Sample Images and Portraits / June 8, 2023 by Jan

This lens is what I call my ‘Professional Lens’.

What does that mean? Does that mean I photograph with amateur lenses as well? No, not at all, but this is the lens I chose when I want to have the most professional result.

I have owned this lens for a year and a half now, and taken 21k photos with it. This is my long term review on this lens from a professional photographer’s perspective.

So let me explain why I call this my professional lens.

What I do

I do a lot of different types of photography. From wedding photography to couples and family shoots, to events, corporate gigs and even some product photography and real estate photography.

But I’d say what I do the most are portraits. And usually, for those photo shoots, my trusty Sony Zeiss 35mm f1.4 ZA Distagon or my Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8 ZA Sonnar would be my go tos. That would depend on the amount of people I’m photographing, the environment and my general mood that day.

Sample Photos

So these shoots would have been shot with the Sony Zeiss 35mm 1.4 ZA:
Example 1
Example 2 - three of them are taken with the 70-180mm

These were taken with the Sony Zeiss 55mm 1.8 ZA:
Example 1 - the forest shots
Example 2 - the outdoor shots

And these were taken with the Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 Dg DN Art:
Example 1
Example 2

These lenses are some of my favourites ever, and I love the way they render. They really do have that 3D look to them, that I don’t see from all fast primes in these focal lengths (especially the Sigma primes often look flat and boring to me), and I do love Sony Zeiss swirly bokeh and strong character.

But, this character isn’t always appropriate. For weddings and couple shoots yes! But for corporate headshots, less so.

Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 DG DN Art Characteristics

So I use this Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 DG DN lens for all my corporate gigs and occasions where I need a clean, realistic depiction of the subject I’m photographing. And that’s the fantastic thing about this lens. For me, it will never blow me away with the way it renders, but it is so consistent and unsurprising (that’s a compliment). With my other lenses, in tough conditions, the characterful bokeh becomes, let’s say, a little too characterful at times. Or the 55mm suffers more from flaring which isn’t always pleasant. No such thing here with the Sigma 24-70mm DG DN. It’s always sharp, from close focus to infinity. It always handles the background well. It handles flaring really well. It’s good in all focal lengths, with no massively noticeable drop off to either end. And the AF is the best of any lens I own.

In daylight, the autofocus is on par with the 35mm, 55mm, and the Tamron 70-180mm. But in difficult and dark lighting conditions, it absolutely obliterates the 35mm & 55mm. I have yet to use the 70-180mm indoors.

The close focus ability is also fantastic. While not being a true macro, it can focus close enough for my needs and has prevented me from needing to buy a dedicated macro lens for product photography or for close ups of wedding rings etc. I really appreciate this feature a lot!

I also appreciate:

• the fantastic quality of the lens hood and that the hood can only be removed by pressing a release button

• the build quality in general

• and the price!

Close focus

It’s not just handy for product photography, but for babies too!

What would I like to change?

I would love for all of my lenses to have aperture rings! I currently have five lenses with a Sony FE mount and only two of my lenses have an aperture ring. I know all (or most?) of the GM lenses do have them but it would be nice if all Sony FE mount lenses had them. I would also gladly lose the ‘AFL’ button. I have no clue how this button is supposed to be of any use to me. I’d love for it to have a use but there’s no practical purpose I can think of.

My only niggle with the image quality otherwise is the vignetting wide open at 24mm. I don’t mind vignetting at all, my 35mm has tons of it but the vignetting here is very difficult to correct. It doesn’t penetrate the image much, only really in the far corners, but it is very abrupt. There’s not a lot of transition area. It looks like the image circle of the lens is just not big enough at this extreme.

Vignetting

Here is a great example of the vignetting at 24mm, wide open, uncorrected in Lightroom.

Then there is the Lightroom lens profile. It tends to over-correct for vignetting, leaving me with brighter corners. I need to then manually adjust the photos by eye, if I want to get rid of the vignette.

Talking about the focal length in general. 24-70mm is a very popular, and by now, a traditional focal length. Coming from Fujifilm though with it’s 16-55mm f2.8 (eq. 24-82.5mm) lens, or looking at Tamron’s 35-150mm f2.0-2.8 lens, or Canon’s 28-70mm f2.0, I wonder if this limitation of it’s focal range and aperture is really reflective of the current technology available. The Canon is hugely expensive but the Tamron is actually really affordable (the Samyang version even more so), so I wonder also if an improvement in this regard would really warrant a huge price increase.

But I would love it if they increased the focal length to 85mm or 100mm even, and if they increased the aperture on the wide end to f2.0, I could see myself leaving the Sony Zeiss 35mm at home for certain shoots.

The extended focal length, while retaining f2.8 and the great image quality would be the most interesting to me.

So, would I recommend this lens?

If you’re doing corporate work, yes! This lens, in combination with any of the A7 Sony cameras will deliver a high-end result that your clients will love. From corporate events to headshots to product photography to corporate environmental photos, this lens will do it all! Predictable, albeit, a little sterile and boring.

However, if you just need a zoom lens for weddings or non-corporate events, like club photography or concert photography, I would probably just grab one of the more compact f2.8 lenses like the Sigma 28-70mm or the Tamron 28-75mm. They’re cheaper, lighter and would fit in a bit better with my primes in regards to the look of the images.

A&E - Wedding Photography at the Maryborough Hotel / June 7, 2023 by Jan

I enjoyed photographing this wedding so much, I split it up into two blog posts. So, click here if you want to see the wedding preparation photos of the bride and groom beforehand. They’re lovely photos that were so much fun to photograph with the architecture of the hotel. I’m such a sucker for tall windows! Haha!

With this wedding, I had a second shooter with me, Nic, who was a fantastic addition to the day. She was able to capture extra photos of the ceremony from another angle, which added so much to the final results of the photos. Having a second shooter might not be in everybody’s budget, but I would heavily recommend couples using this option!

Usually when I write these wedding blogs, I hone in on my three favourite parts or aspects of the wedding. And with this wedding, I will continue that tradition.

Reason 1 - Magic

I think one of my favourite parts of the wedding was the setting: the Orangery at The Maryborough. For those who don’t know, the Orangery in Cork is a venue with expansive glass walls, lush greenery, and cascading natural light. It’s a fantastic wedding venue as it let’s in so much light and has a magical botanical look to it.

It almost looks like the couple had a destination wedding with how exotic the Orangery looks. I am not aware of any other wedding venue in Cork that looks like that – and would recommend it for its views of the greenery and gardens outside

Reason 2 – Heart

Heart

“…my second favourite part of the wedding was the best man’s speech during the ceremony.”

On a more personal note, to the couple, my second favourite part of the wedding was the best man’s speech during the ceremony. He absolutely knocked it out of the park with what he said: it was a perfect balance of hilarious banter, that made everyone laugh, and heartfelt moments. That’s exactly the way it should be.

Reason 3 – A photographer’s obsession

And my third favourite thing, not that these are in any order at all, has to be the staircases! This is a wedding photographer’s dream. Both the indoor and main outdoor stairs that lead up to the main entrance. These staircases were great as they add height, interest, and architecture to the shoot.

It’s funny as well, both Aisling and Emmett are both relaxed and easy-going people, but the one demand Aisling did have was that we had to do the couple shoot on the staircase! In black and white! Haha, don’t worry Aisling, that was my thought too!

Thanks for letting me photograph your wedding!

Have a look here at my wedding photography packages for 2023/2024.

5-star Google Review

Aisling and Emmett clearly enjoyed the photos and the whole wedding day with us as well. They left me this lovely Google review:

“We used Save The Journey as our wedding photographer for our wedding in May. We have only great things to say about them.
From the first point of contact to the day of the wedding Jannik was so helpful, informative and overall just a lovely person to deal with.
On the day of the wedding Jannik and Nikki were fantastic, super professional while still making the whole experience fun and relaxed. We both said afterwards how much fun we had getting the couples photos taken!
We are absolutely thrilled with how our photos turned out, they are exactly what we had asked for! If you are considering using Save the Journey as your wedding photographer 100% go for it!! Thanks again for everything Jannik and Nikki! 😊”