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After a rather trying time with a composite work, I was advised by Richard to go out in the sunshine. So I did. All the way to Wicklow.
I didn’t have any real plan in mind but wound up as far south as Brittas Bay. I kept hearing about Brittas Bay but really and truly, all it is is a huge beach and today it didn’t do Beach for me. So after looking at it for about 5 minutes and idly wishing the wind turbines were a touch closer, I got back in the car and drove to Wicklow. Where I passed this.
According to my reading of the map, this is Wicklow Head Lighthouse. You can walk a good part of the way to it past some sheep (and little lambs – some of which were black and very cute but very running away) and some cattle. You might be able to get closer but I was playing chicken with the sun which was on its way down behind an inconveniently located Wicklow mountain. So I went for the lighthouse.
Anyone who knows me at all well knows that Philippe Plisson is probably my favourite photographer in the world and he is particularly well known for some superlative shots of the lighthouses in Brittany. There is also some really hot stuff by Jean Guichard but what both of them have in common is a lot of photographs of lighthouses. I like lighthouses. I like them a lot. There’s something lonely sentinel about them. This one is a bit like that. I’d like to have a go off it at dawn when the sun is arriving rather than when it’s disappearing, and also from a bit closer with a 10-20. But I like this; there’s something warm about it.
A little while later, after I’d played with a castle and some filters, I had a look at the harbour light and this is what I got.
I think there might have been one filter left on – it was getting dark enough to stretch the exposures without using the filters anyway.
I quite like both of them to be honest; they might be the nicest lighthouse shots I’ve done. While I was in the harbour area in Wicklow a man told me I should have been there 2 weeks ago, the sky was an amazing pink. Que faire?
Anyway, this is from my big day out today. I wound up in Wicklow with the objective of adding to the Abandoned Boats collection but that just didn’t happen because I was distracted with ruins and lighthouses.
The blue cast comes from the plate that the melting ice cube was sitting on. It was lit with one on camera Speedlite.
One of the nice things about spring springing up like it is in Dublin at the moment is the world looks a whole lot better. I don’t know about you but the winter seemed to be particularly grey this year. Now, the music sounds happier, the photographs look brighter, the evenings are longer. It’s all good on the photography front provided I go out and take some photographs 
On the subject of Speedlites, have a look here.
This from Stephen.
More light to come
This is a sunset over the Bay of Angels in Nice. The airport is off to the left as you look at the photograph, and I’ve been told the cloud looks a bit like a UFO. I didn’t really notice that at the time.
I’m planning the purchase of a new camera bag and a new tripod. I saw a tripod I liked last week and I quite fancy it. It’s not for my heavy lenses – I am using the zooms less and less anyway – but for the macro lens in particular, the 50mm to play with DOF and stuff. The camera bag is an effort to deal with something which I learned last week which is that I hate lugging loads of camera equipment around. Really hate it and what’s more I don’t especially need to lug it all around. I figured this out last week when I realised I only used 2 of the 5 lenses I brought with me and never took out the flash at all. I did, however, use the filters, quite a lot.
But basically I am a wimp and find the lugging of the gear around rather too much.
Now for a couple of other vaguely photography related matters.
Someone passed this link from the Daily Mail to me about a South Africa based photographer who went to rather great lengths to get some – admittedly outstanding – wildlife photographs.
Having spent about 30 seconds considering it, I have decided that no photograph I could ever take is worth contracting malaria for.
Passing the Ball by Ronan Palliser
Big Shots for 25 February via Boston.com. The first photograph, the surf shot is one of the best I have ever seen. The beauty is I was watching Mavericks online via their ustream feed and it was brilliant but the screen was just too small.
I got lost somewhere in old Nice this afternoon.
Way back in the days I used to shoot film, I had a small Tamrac camera bag that was a backpack, carried my camera, the two lenses I had and an insane quantity of film. When I got the 70-250mm, it taxed things a little but this is life. I got over it.
Now, I have a couple of Lowe camera bags; the big one and the small one. The small one is bigger than the Tamrac; but it’s smaller than the big one. The big one goes everywhere with me; if I’d any sense I’d bring the small one as well and decant. But it’s hard to pack two camera bags when you’re paying attention to airline luggage restrictions. The big one is already a battle.
At the moment, it has in it – if you haven’t seen it – a 40D, a 100mm 2.8, a 50mm 1.8, a 70-300mm, a 17-85mm and a 10-20mm, a 580 EX II and an array of filters. And it is heavy. It would be heavier still if I didn’t happen to leave the 50-500mm zoom at home.
I hate carrying the camera bag. I never actually realised just how much I hated it until this morning. I picked up the camera, and tossed up between the 17-85 and the 50. The 50 is sharp yes, but it lacks range, and it was bright outside. I was not likely to desperately need the speed of the 50 although I might regret the depth of field. I spent the day shooting with the 17-85 and just one memory card. And it might be the best fun I’ve had in ages. I walked miles, something which is soul-destroying with the full camera bag. I can understand why a lot of Art Wolfe’s photography is coming out of an iPhone lately. It means you don’t have to lug a full camera bag around.
The 17-85mm is a very useful range. I would like it to be a little faster and so am toying with a 24-70mm. I’ve been advised that on a crop sensor, this is not really wide enough at the short end. Unfortunately the alternatives, the 18-55 for example, are nowhere near long enough at the long end. If Canon or someone produced a 2.8 17-70 or so I’d be quite happy with them.
I didn’t take any great photographs today, the one above notwithstanding, but I got more on average out of the day which given the weather conditions (bleh and cloudy) was nice. And okay I had to fake the tripod and filters lark with the waterfall and still blew out the sky highlights, but I managed. Sometimes, it is no bad thing to walk away from all the gear and actually take photographs within some practical constraints like “this is the only lens I’ve got with me”.
The one above, I am thinking about putting into black and white although there’s something about the warmth of the colours that appeals to me. More than anything the toy cars appealed to me. They are a very nostalgic shape.
Today, a little faster shutter speed than last night. Although…I had ideas…I just didn’t have a tripod or a filter with me and to be frank I was running out of card space as well.
Met a young photographer, well young, I guess he was 10 years younger than me, or else his plastic was very good. He had a 450D and he had a problem with it. He was glad I had a Canon; he thought I’d be able to answer his question which was why, on continuous shooting, in aperture priority or fully manual would the wretched thing only shoot 2 shots at a time consecutively. As mine would do 16 RAW and I’ve never used a 450D I was at a loss to help him; in sports mode he said it would do 3.5 per camera spec. I’d be miffed. I tried to locate a manual for the 450D online but the EDGE network in that part of Nice sucked. Losers all round.
Plus it’ll cost me a fortune in data roaming charges.
Anyway.
Today I did interesting things like take a camera up in the Ferris wheel and got this:
which usefully has some snow coloured Alps in the background. I like snow covered Alps, particularly in the background. When I was in snow covered Alps on Tuesday they were damn cold.
More to come later.
While I was recceing possible photography locations earlier during the day, I discovered there were places where water broke quite heavily against the rocks near the sea wall to the port end of the Bay of Angels in Nice, so when the sun came out this evening, I decided to go in search of some long exposures. It was an informative experience.
For one thing, I learned that some people are just not afraid of being swept away off rocks. You’ll see about 5 of them in the photograph above – it was, I think, a 30 second exposure, hence their ghostly aspect.
The second thing is I suck at sunsets.
The best fun I had came later, after dark. I’m starting to think I’m sometimes happier shooting in the near dark than in the light.
I’ve plans for some things like this in Dublin.
Yesterday I came across a book in FNAC for 52 weekend projects or some such. The book was originally published in America so I was reluctant enough to purchase it in French since it’s probably on amazon for half the price and in English. Not that I’m afraid of French, oh no. But it had some nice lightpainting stuff and how to build lightboxes. I’m going to look into it.
Couple of links today.
1) John Williams and the Hill of Tara.
2) Galloping Green – Spring.
3) Dannie O’Brien – Knot
Okay. I’m off to amazon to see about the cost of a 765B tripod in Amazon. If it’s more than 89E, then I’m going to buy one in FNAC. Maybe.
I was in Dignes Les Bains today having done the train des Pignes. I had hoped for photos out of that but they were all taken through a window that doubled as a fly cemetry and frankly meh is as good as you’ll get for any of them.
On the way home, however, I got caught in the Carnival Parade. I don’t do religion/Lent/that stuff but I thought Carnival ended on Shrove Tuesday. Evidently the Ville de Nice doesn’t give much of a toss for the religious side of things either. Carnival is on for another week or so here, apparently. Colourful parade every night.
I was fortunate enough to have a festival pass for Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin last year and it was fun. But compared to what I caught of the Carnival parade tonight, it sucked. We have no real idea how to party. There were no restrictions or anything here on this; you could hop in and join and play havoc. People did.
I got a few photographs although I hadn’t planned for shootoing it tonight. They were all taken with the 50mm 1.8, no flash, and I think I shot ISO up to 800 at one stage.
From the 13 or 14 that made it up to the pixie account, here are a few:
This one is [at the moment] my favourite shot. Something about the colours. If I remember the float correctly, that’s the face of a puppet in the throes of popping out another puppet other end.
Frogface
I think this one is Asterix but I wouldn’t swear to it. I also think the theme of the parade was to pay more attention to ecological matters which if you saw the mess of confetti and streamers around the streets when it was all over, you’d see some irony. I’ll probably have a better shot tomorrow with a speedlite – can’t swear to it though as the 50mm worked out nicely. I’ll also not bother with the staged seating as I was able to get up nice and close courtesy of being stuck on the street unable to get to my hotel.
Although I’ll bet it’s under snow now.
This is some plantlife – I’m not very good at matters botanical and I hesitate to call it moss in case it isn’t in fact, moss – that was scrambling an existance on one of the outer walls at the Trim Castle complex up to yesterday. I love it. I really like the colours.
Anyway, it was the dewdrops that were catching my attention here, not the standing stems so much. I like things like this and if it freezes to night I may have some fun with some ice too.
I will, as and when I get links, add links to the other Trim photographers photographs to this post.
Anyone who knows me knows I collect some odd things. Since I have a macro lens and a flash, the odd things I collect involve icecube moulds and the one I use most frequently is the heart shaped mould. Rest assured I also own Space Invaders and Fish shaped moulds. I bought a bunch of new ones in IKEA yesterday that are drying out.
In the past, I have also made ice cubes with added food colouring, and featured them in work that centred on the glass work they were in. Today, inspired by some of the things I noticed while shooting the melting ice last year, I decided to shoot something for the day that was in it. That is to say, when I went to get fresh strawberries for breakfast this morning, Tesco was still flogging red coloured cards.
I don’t get Saint Valentine’s Day very much. Maybe I am overly romantic at heart – some would say probably over cynical – but it always struck me as somewhat of an excuse to make a formulaic effort. You don’t have to wait until 14 February to do something romantic and to be honest, some of the most memorably sweet things that men have done for me in the past have been at other times in the year. It used to be that finding the perfect rose in February was hard, hence it was such an expression of love – look I wasted all this effort just to prove how much I love you – whereas now…you can get them at the garage. Yesterday I noted some of my friends pointed out that they appreciated much more things that they really loved – such as – in one special case – crochet books – little luxuries that people want but can’t quite justify. Special efforts that are unusual. This things, these thoughts past the simple, reinforce the worth of friendship and special friends much more than the diamonds that Jared were advertising to me yesterday.
Anyway, that’s all by way of an aside. This morning I was appalled to see I didn’t have too many frozen hearts in the freezer this morning, plus they were buried under a packet of potato waffles. On the plus side although it wasn’t working on ETTL, at least the recalcitrant flash was working. In addition to the icecube moulds of the fish and stars and stuff yesterday I also bought some fake flower petals from IKEA and I still own a bottle of red food colouring and a copy of Photoshop.
What fascinates me sometimes is what you can do when you give yourself some raw material and try to create something from it.
This, for example:
Focussing on an ice cube which is a) melting b) 1.5cm high and c) on a white reflective surface is to the order of difficult on a 2.8 aperture. But I wanted the depth of field (which I sort of didn’t really get) and the colours (which I did).
This is for the ones who dumped me.
And this is for the one who won’t. At some stage .
Couple of links for today:
Tommie – for my love of Robert Doisneau’s photography.
Richard – I may have linked this one before – I can’t remember but I loved it at the time and still do
Randall Munro – yes I know it’s not photography but seriously.
And I rather liked this little story. It reminds me a bit of the “I love Louth” ad from the Ask Not What Your County Can Do For You GAA ads from a few years back.
Next time I swear I’ll play with the little ickle space invader ice cubes.
Well that’s the title anyway. It’s not strictly speaking accurate as I know this surfer lives in Dublin and I know this photograph was taken in Morocco. But we did fly home the evening this picture was taken.
I’ve a yen to go travelling again. I’ve had it since about September to be honest but things kept getting in the way. Holiday plans in November got hammered from several different quarters, at Christmas also. I own a ticket to Fuerteventura and should hopefully get there sometime in the next week or two. I’m looking forward to it on several grounds – my mind really needs a holiday from Ireland at this stag. Also I need different things to photograph, different places, different aspects of life. I know Fuerteventura is like European but I’m trying to toss up an ambition of making the ordinary look extraordinary and finding beauty in the mundane things we take for granted. It’s very easy to be impressed by photographs taken in exotic places; less easy to find a way of making the things around us seem special. This means I will probably spend most of the summer trying to find the photographs I have not yet taken of Howth and Clontarf with the odd foray as far as Dun Laoghaire.
The photograph above I did all sorts of things with it. My file copy suggests I applied duo tone processing to it and knowing my taste in such things I probably used yellow and black. And then converted it to black and white again. I imagine I messed around with the contrast and the curves considerably as well. I’m still debating whether I could not have gotten a similar effect with a lot less work. I suspect so.
I sometimes like to burn out the highlights in black and white shots just to emphasis contrast. I’m sure this is probably not best practice but someone once told me, with respect to Picasso or someone, that until you knew the rules you couldn’t effectively break them.
But what the hell. Here are some burned out highlights for a kitesurfer in Dublin.
The photograph was taken in June 2006; it was taken the first day I went taking kite photographs in Dublin that year (I’d taken a few in Australia a few weeks’ earlier) with a brand new, as I thought, last lens I was going to buy, 70-300mm Sigma DG APO. It cost me 199E in Conns and was a shocking amount of money to spend on camera equipment I thought at the time. By the end of the year, a 50-500mm costing 1249E had joined it more than doubling the value of my camera equipment and since then, things have gone very wrong altogether. 200E is now laughably little for a lens.
Incidently, if you’re in the market for a value for money zoom and have a Canon, the Sigma DG APO is probably the best value for money lens on the market bar none. And yes, I own the 50mm 1.8 variously known as the nifty fifty and plastic fantastic. The 50mm is cheap and feels cheap. The Sigma is cheap but has survived being dropped and soaked more than a few times. They both, if you’re competent, can be used to take great, great photographs and they both teach you to be competent. Right, enough with the lens dictatory. The weather no cooperata with LivingForLight these days as in it’s perfect while I am doing the day job and lousy when I am not doing the day job. This is very regretable.. As a result, my pink dawn plans fro the morning are probably in deep trouble.
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