This is the 10007th photo taking with this camera which I have about a year. This is actually quite low by my standards; prior to 2009, I’d normally make 15000-20000 photos a year; it’s the price of sport. I’m finding that quite hard work now, and having reviewed an awful lot of them lately…it’s really hard work.
Anyway, I was wondering what sort of a photograph I’d like to make this evening. The weather never really gave me the light I was hoping for although one of my mates reckoned the sky was a stunning colour this morning; truth is not where I was. The clouds didn’t clear enough for a sunset either so I went and played with the reflections off the cumulo-nimbus. I still can’t focus for a a lottery win in the dark, particularly when the camera is on a tripod 3 feet below my eye level. ;-( Anyway while I was wandering around town, it occurred to me the tides might be nice for a long exposure without filters – given the grey sky and the fact that it was late and I was stuck in traffic – if I had some sort of a focal point. I chose the green beacon on Bull Island because I know it and feel safer there than I would were I to give Poolbeg Lighthouse a similar shot.
Exposure was basically guess work – camera reckons I over exposed about 4 stops but I’m not sure what it was metering off because frankly….yes, I think I got it more right than the camera did. It was post processed in Adobe RAW – the blackslider took a hit and that was about it. I may have upped the exposure another stop. I like it a lot. I’d like to give it a shot with a really clear star light sky some evening also – not going to happen today because there were too many clouds.
A few minutes later I took this also:
Those towers are ubiquitous. I have a lot of photographs of them now, and a couple of striking ones. I may push them together into a little ickle gallery page later on this evening. I like this though because – surprising as it may seem, no filters went near this either. I own a pile of NDs, a blue and green and a tobacco grad and I use them variously to create space age images or to really mess around with photos for post processing. Normally I’d swear that there most have been at least a light ND on this but no, nothing. Didn’t even have to consider it. Put simply, it’s worth going out shooting in the dark sometimes. But man, focussing in the dark is a hassle.
Only one link today and if you are interested in photography and lighting, you really should take the time to click on it. Yesterday evening, Mark Wallace did a lighting web seminar for Pocket Wizard. I thought it would be all about pocket wizard but it wasn’t. It was all about all your options with lighting and dealt with on and off camera flash. As a round up of lighting techniques it is by some distance the most useful link I have come across on the web. It was flagged to me by Strobist who is without any question the best known off camera lighting expert on the web.
There’s nothing very pyrotechnical about this photograph and in that, I think lies the reason I like it so much. It’s easy to make a kitesurfing photograph look great when your kitesurfer is dangling upside down in the middle of a newstyle trick. And once you have bells and whistles like autofocus and continuous shooting they are not necessarily that hard to shoot.
The mundane can be a lot harder to make interesting and maybe this is not so interesting; but for some reason I’ve always loved it.
I’m not sure what to say about this. It was taken with a 350D and a 70-300mm Sigma zoom. I’ve always liked Sigma lenses. There was a lot of haze for this photograph.
I have this yen to do lots of black skies but it’s difficult to find a balance when you have a volcanic mountain to deal with. Not that it’s any excuse. Sometimes I’m just looking to create an atmosphere.
I’m back to the Canary Islands in about 2 weeks’ time all going according to plan. I do want to have some fun there with the travel photography; I hope I get a lot more clear blue skies. Given some fortune I could get some startling things. I’m looking forward to it.
I can’t remember why, but this lot of photographs was taken a morning before I had some problems with the camera, can’t remember what exactly, because they preceded a break from taking photography. I’m not sure why.
I always liked them for some reason.
They seemed to have so much warmth to them.
as well as toys
I was out last night in town. I’ve mixed feelings. Kyle Tunney and I talked about a Christmas lights trip in January but we never got around to it and I suspect the snow and ice didn’t help. One of the things that I wouldn’t mind doing at some stage – would run it past Kyle but he’s mega busy lately – is hit the town midweek at around 4 in the morning when it’s still dark but there are very few people there and you can really play with long exposures. I found the Four Courts particularly attractive this morning, I must confess.
I don’t exactly know why but I went to the archives today to have a look at old photographs, see if anything struck me in a way that hadn’t first time round. The whole exercise was interesting from a purely self-indulgent point of view. I had a brief conversation about this on twitter with Rory Wallace and Mike Patterson this evening. What it boiled down to was this. I think I was a better photographer 2 years ago than I am now. And I’m not sure why.
Technically I know a lot more now than I did then. I know a lot more about how cameras work, how image processing software works. And in that time I’ve taken a bunch of very, very striking photographs such as the melting ice in the lamplight, a few motor-racing shots, sunrise in Skerries and a few other bits and pieces. But they are stand out photographs in a falling average in some respects. I know, for example, I got to be particularly choosy about the photographs that got out in the wild – see the early flickr stuff versus the later flickr stuff for example (there are 8000 photographs plus on my flickr account by the way).
I think the problems relate to the kitesurfing above all else. In the last 2 years there are maybe a handful of striking photographs from the kitesurfing, the well known one being the sunset kiteloop, and the other key one being Francois Colussi/Jeanie Johnson. Possibly I need to go back to scratch and start over with them. Or possibly it’s just the weather. Difficult to say.
I have been thinking about photography in general lately. Mainly because I’ve been looking for something to shoot, something special and different. I really don’t have any excuse, not the sort of excuses I had 3 or 4 years ago. I want to shoot macro? There is a 2.8 100mm macro lens in the bag. Play with flash? 580 Speedlite II although the last time I tried to use it wasn’t working properly. Must check that out. I have zoom coverage from 10mm up to 500mm even allowing for the fact that Trish has my medium zoom. I know that one of the most important things I should be able to do is dig something special out of the common and ordinary around me and to that end I’ve played with the ornaments on my mantlepiece, the cheap bottles of nailpolish I’ve accumulated and broken wine glasses that I dropped on the floor.
I think really what I need at this stage is a photobuddy to drag me out to do things I harp on about but never do. If the weather cooperates tomorrow I will look at going either north or south…we’ll see.
I’m still not taking m/any photographs of late although the camera is in the car with me most days for the purposes of fantastic sunsets, when the clouds go south for the summer that is. Soon, hopefully.
I can’t remember what I was doing when I took this. The date on the photograph is July last year, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion it was a playing with the flash moment but beyond that, not sure. Anyway, it somehow missed its route onto the blog so 7 months late, here it is.
This was taken on a flickr photography trip in Dublin two or three years ago. It’s one of those photographs which seems to have caught people’s attention. I know for example that there are three copies of it gone to Poland and it has caused discussion the one or two times it hit People’s Photography.
It’s the Millenium Spire in Dublin with reflections of Clerys and Clerys itself in the background. I like the photograph because it has somewhat of a film noir atmosphere about it. I can’t remember exactly how I did it but selective use of film grain looks like it was an option and I must have applied some filter at some stage because there’s a slightly cartoonish hint on the roof of the department store. I honestly can’t remember. It was processed with Photoshop Elements 5.0 because at that stage I had given up on constant memory issues with the Gimp – yes Donncha and Richard I know, it should work but at the time it didn’t – and I know that I never really knew PSE anywhere near as well as I now know Photoshop CS3. I suspect posterisation and I suspect selectively applied.
I have a yen to do this to the clock in Saint Stephen’s Green.
I missed an opportunity to do a fantastic timelapse last week because I just didn’t know something was going to be erected. I’m considering looking for clearance to do a timelapse of it coming down. My fingers are crossed.
This is one of the older shots, done with a lot of automatic buttons pushed on a brief – very brief – trip to Rome a few years ago. I didn’t really have the freedom to do what I wanted while I was there and set up time was very limited. Very much a case of suck it and see what came out of the camera when I got home.
Rome is one of those places that a) you want to take photographs but b) want to take photographs that 100 million people haven’t taken before. It’s very hard.
I haven’t been out much taking photographs of late, so there haven’t been very many updates here. This is from the archive to remind me how to press the publish button on this blog from time to time.
There tends to be arguments about the white balance in this shot. This – for what it is worth – is a near exact reflection of what it looked like when I was there. I’ve been advised on occasion to tone down the orange glow, or get rid of it altogether. I’m reluctant to do so because a) I like it and b) it was there anyway. I have other shots of cities by night – like this one – with different shades:
What gets me about the shot from Rome is that while it looks lovely and all that, what would really make it shiny is if there were clearly identifiable landmarkes in it. I’m not asking for much. Just a Colosseum or two.
We’ve been hit with an unusually cold spell lately in Ireland. Much is being made of the lack of preparation for something which happens every 30 years or so. One of our pipes burst yesterday and driving in and out of the estate is rarely anything other than difficult. I wish the ice would melt as fast as the snow does.
This photograph was taken in my front garden; I don’t do much gardening but was looking for some contrast between the cold, cold snow and something growing. A few weeks ago I pointed out on the other blog that in fact, the shortest day of the year was done, and we could look forward to lengthening days. I didn’t bank on the country getting covered in a blanket of ice for a few weeks. It’s been going on since Christmas; feels like an awful long time. My herb garden is probably in deep trouble at this stage.
I’ve mixed feelings about this. If in fact the roads could be kept reasonably clear (which is barely happening at the moment) I would love to take a trip up to the Cooley Peninsula or to the mountains in Wicklow, just to see what I could do. It’s not really worth the risk to me at the moment. Not when the trek to Tesco is already a skating rink.
Anyway, the above was taken with the 100mm macro which I seem to be using quite a lot lately. I’m surprised by this to be honest .
On 31 December 2009, there was a lunar eclipse scheduled. Because I now own an intervalometer, I decided to try to shoot a timelapse of it. Because the eclipse was only one eighth coverage, there wasn’t much change to be observed really but I got a kick out of seeing how the moon moved through the sky. This is a five second film of about 43 shoots that I took that night….It’s my first timelapse and I have plans for a few others. Unfortunately the weather is not really suiting me on that front.
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