Another shot from Sunday’s photowalk. I peeked in to have a look at the Dublin on Ice set up in Smithfield and well, it’s no Rockefeller Center. Still the red, white and blue caught my eye.

I’ve been suffering with Photo-Block, I go out with the camera and come back not having taken a single shot, I’m not sure where it came from but I’ve definitely been in a rut. That’s why an email that I got last week from Lauren from Simply Zesty really cheered me up. It was to invite me along to a Photowalk around Dublin with the theme “Cheer Up Ireland” which was being organised to promote Vodafone’s “Cheer Up Ireland” competition on Flickr (€3000 voucher prize so well worth entering!). I’ve not been on a Photowalk for ages and I always find that they’re a great way to shock me out of my comfort zone. We met up in town yesterday morning and we all agreed that having seen the brown slushy streets and grey skies it was going to be a challenge to find anything cheery to photograph. We set off for the Phoenix Park where it was still a Winter Wonderland and I started to wander away from the group to see what I could find. I spotted a family with some sleds and decided to follow and see where they were off to, I mean, what’s cheerier than a family having fun on sleds? Well, after a lot of walking I came through some trees and discovered a whole hill of people of all ages insanely throwing themselves down the slopes on everything from boogie boards wrapped in plastic bags to car bonnets. Perfect!

So, after about an hour of photographing all the fun I realised all the other Photobloggers had already moved on so I hoofed it over to Smithfield where I found them all on the Ferris Wheel:

After an impromptu snowball fight with the mischievous guy below we were all feeling a little bit cold and hungry so we headed back to the Odessa for a delicious lunch laid on by Vodafone. It was great to see all the familiar faces and I really enjoyed taking photos for the fun of it again so thanks to Simply Zesty and Vodafone, it was just what I needed!