Ed O’Keeffe Photography

About

My name is Ed O’Keeffe, and I would like to thank you for taking an interest in my photography website. From the age of 5 I have been taking photographs. My dad brought me a camera and tripod for my 5th birthday. A story goes that in the summer of 1992 I was taking pictures in Cork, Ireland and set up my camera and tripod in the middle street to take a photograph. Evidently the traffic stopped to watch this little boy take a picture. By the age of 8, my dad had taught me a lot about photography, he even showed me how to process and develop my own films and print wet prints in the darkroom.

Through my teenage years I witnessed the digital revolution, first with computers coming into the home and then digital photography coming to the main stream. I fully embraced the computer and what my dad had taught me about photography, I taught him about using computers and Adobe Photoshop. We started with Photoshop 5 and a Canon film scanner. After a couple of years of this, we managed to buy a second hand Nikon compact digital.

The majority of the photographs on this site were taken with either a Canon Powershot S60 or a Nikon D80. Mostly from around 2004 onwards.

I am now 21 years old, living in the city centre of Manchester in a student flat. Studying Design and Art Direction (second year) at Manchester Metropolitan University. A translation of the degree would be graphic design with advertising. Photography is a huge passion in my life and although just a hobby, I hope that this website will go some way in helping me make that transition from hobbiest to professional at some point when I have finished my BA.

History of the Website

My uncle Michael taught my based HTML coding over the Christmas of 2000 and I started making personal websites soon after, mainly on free web hosts etc. I developed a new website called “eddx” over the summer of 2003 and purchased the eddx domain using my school friends new hosting business. eddx.com started as a personal site and quickly developed into a place for me to publish my creativity, first my artwork from GCSEs and A-levels, then Graphic Design work from my BTEC and my photography. It soon became a web log or blog.

Sadly, in 2006 due to my hosting company being sold to a larger business and my own misunderstandings, I lost the eddx.com domain and now can’t afford to buy it back of the company who brought it (even though they don’t seem to use it). Anyway, I then purchased a number of number domains from GoDaddy.com; edwud.com and edsphotoblog.com and republished my blog content on this current site in the winter of 2006. Hosted on DreamHost.com it has been much more reliable as a host for my work.

The Future / Dreams

As you can fully understand, my passion in life is photography. I hope to leave University at the end of my three year course, to become a full time photographer. I aim to run this site and publish its current daily content for as many years to come as I can foresee.

Ultimately I wish to have more time to publish more photographic tips and tricks, probably in video format. As well as travel more. Ideally, I would be a freelance photographer, spending time taking a range of photos for clients, traveling the world and teaching seminars on all aspects of photography.

Other random facts

* I have been to London, Paris, Manchester and New York in a weekend.
* My mother died when I was 18 months old.
* I swam in Lough Mask - Ireland
* I don’t have any brothers or sisters.
* I don’t have any tattoos or piercing.
* I have taken over 18,000 digital photos between March 2005 and September 2006 on one camera.
* I once worked on at a TV station on a drama program.
* I got rejected from a job at an Apple Store.
* I have been to New York twice.
My goal is 1,000,000 miles (40 times around the globe).
* I went to drama school almost every Saturday for 13 years.
* My name means cool, calm and together, Edward has a sensible head on his shoulders and is unflappable. A good friend who is loyal (a key ring said it so it must be true?).
* The O’Keeffe family motto is “To the brave and faithful man nothing is difficult”.
* I visited Lego Land in Denmark.

Anything else?

I dislike taking about myself, but recently a number of visitors have requested more information. If there is anything that you will like to ask about myself or my website, it would be a pleasure to answer any questions or queries that you might have. Please contact me or leave a comment in the form below…