Tag: memories

David Ryan – Documentary Phtographer

david #2

David Ryan is a storyteller. He tells other people’s stories with his camera.
As a documentary wedding photographer he’s a particular man who share’s other’s special moments in a very particular and unique way. Only David can tell a story through pictures the way he does. His is a special and distinctive talent.
David has a special place in my heart along this journey that’s led me to starting a podcast. A couple of years ago I was attending a good friend’s wedding in Ballina, Co. Mayo. David was their wedding photographer. Now, at this wedding I knew my wife and the bride and groom, and really, no-one else.
Following a beautiful ceremony at the Ice House Hotel I was wandering along the banks for the River Moy while family & friends took pictures of the bridal party. The one person who didn’t seemed to be in this melee was the wedding photographer. He was skirting around the edges, sometimes taking a picture of what was going on with the bride and groom, other times taking pictures of the young children as they played games of chasing while trying not to drop their ice-creams. David wasn’t doing the thing I’d come to know wedding photographers to do – controlling and directing the action. He was behaving like the proverbial fly on the wall.
I was fascinated.
So after while, having watched his modus operandi, I worked up the nerve to approach him and ask a question. Now, as you’ll hear David talk about in our conversation, the questions he gets asked as a photographer can, for him, seem quite trivial and superficial. And David hates the superficial.
Not knowing this, I went up to David and asked my question.
“What are you looking to capture?”
David’s reaction startled me, as I later learned the question startled him.
He turned to face me, took a step back and said, “Wow, what a great question.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
Having the courage to ask someone a question that was really burning a hole in my brain, from a place of genuine curiousity, and the amazing conversations David and I had throughout the rest of the day, awoke something within me that I’d long ignored.
That I wanted to spend more time with creative people learning about what makes them tick.
And most importantly, that it is OKAY to feel like this. So if I were to act from this place the results would more than not be really enjoyable.
And year and a half later, I finally worked up the nerve to start this podcast, which had some of its origins in that moment, outside a hotel along side a river on a gloriously sunny Saturday on the west-coast of Ireland.
So returning home to Ireland for a holiday in April, it was important for me to bring this full circle by sitting down to catch up with David.
I hope you enjoy – it’s a deep conversation and at one point we get much heavier than I ever expected. Thank you to David for his honesty, his openness and for not being afraid to let who he really his show through.
You can see more of David’s work here:
Thanks to:
Podcast homepage – https://widtaabbqs.home.blog/
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Ep13 – Nigel Featherstone Pt1

Nigel Featherstone
Photo: Andrew Sikorski

Ep13…Pt1

That’s right, folks, this is Part 1, of 2.

Nigel Featherstone is an Australian writer whose, powerful new novel, Bodies of Men is to be published by Hachette Australia on the 23rd April – it’s the story of two Australian soldiers who find love on the fringes of the Egyptian desert while World War 2 rages around them.

This book is significant. This story is important. It’s beautifully written. Nigel is the right person to be telling this story at this time.

Great literature and art can sometimes be ahead of its time, yet it acts as the beacon so we can all fix on a common point in the direction we need to go. This book may well be that beacon of how we can further understand each other and learn to live along side others no matter the differences.

When I set out to do this podcast I put sitting down with Nigel to record as one of the big goals for myself. Nigel has been very important to my own creative development since we met in 2014 @ the ACT Writer’s Centre Hardcopy manuscript development program where Nigel was the facilitator and coordinator.

For a couple of years following the program Nigel was a mentor to me, helping me to find ways to create no matter what. Without his involvement, I may not have had the courage to embark on something as crazy as doing this podcast.

In this part of the conversation get spend time on the journey leading up to the writing of Bodies of Men. In Part 2, which is coming out on the 23rd April to coincide with the release of Nigel’s novel, we get deep into the story behind of the story and so much more.

Nigel is a rare character and has a generous artistic soul.

I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

You can stay up to date with all that’s happening in Nigel’s world here:

BODIES OF MEN, a novel to be published by Hachette Australia on 23 April 2019
– launching in Canberra at 6pm on Thursday 16 May at The Street Theatre

Thanks to:

Podcast homepage – https://widtaabbqs.home.blog/