Finn has a photo eye for personality
They're by Sixth Year student Finn Harney, who moved from St Kevin's in Dunlavin to CPC last year. Finn found that there was no photography club in the Kilcullen school, and approached his art teacher Ms Kelly about setting one up. "I had been taking pictures for years, and she agreed to the idea," he says.
He was actually pushing an open door, because Ms Kelly has been incorporating an iPhone photography module in her Transition Year classes for some time. "But I missed that, since I only arrived here last year." The club was established, and this year seems to be going well, though Finn is the only Senior class student involved so far.
His interest in photography goes back some years to when he was given a camera with some damage to it, by a family friend. "I started from there, and then moved to other cameras."
Though he has an eye for unusual landscape composition, as one view from the Cliffs of Moher shows, Finn has found a particular interest in portraiture. That developed, so to speak, into a series of shoots at music events over the past summer.
"There was a rap artist I rang up one day and said I'd like to take some photos at his gig, and he said sure. While I was there, I met some people from a collective called SOD — Straight Outta Dublin. They do a lot of stuff with urban music, and I got chatting to them and I later shot a gig they were having."
This resulted in more contacts and working with other people, and when he sent them pictures he'd taken, many used them on their various social media outlets.
"When I take a picture of a person, I'm trying to catch a moment in time and do it well, to try and get out the subject's personality. It can take a bit of figuring out, but all my best pictures have happened in a moment ... sometimes I just turn to somebody and ask them to pose, and when you put them on the spot like that they don't have time to think if they're going to be cool, they don't turn on an act."
School and studies have since intervened to curtail his available photography time, though a recent shoot with the Emporium fashion website street wear showcase was a 'really cool' event.
Finn is contemplating a media course at third level, and even if he doesn't go into photography as a career, he reckons he'll certainly retain a strong interest in it at hobby level.
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