I have a macro lens.

and a clothes line

and a large population of spiders in the garden.

I like this.

ETA: and so did the nice people at Pixie where it has been voted TOTD. Yay.

I’ve come to the conclusion that other people are better at selecting jewellery for me than I am. This is from one of my friends who thought a necklace that featured some element of the sea was suitable for someone like me. The blue piece of glass is seaglass. You can collect seaglass on most [...]]]>

I’ve come to the conclusion that other people are better at selecting jewellery for me than I am. This is from one of my friends who thought a necklace that featured some element of the sea was suitable for someone like me. The blue piece of glass is seaglass. You can collect seaglass on most beaches; it’s broken glass rounded by the action of the sea. Based on what I see by way of broken glass on local beaches to me, I won’t see to much in the way of this beautiful blue as clear glass and brown glass is favoured for “breaking on the beach” purposes in Dollymount. The necklace also features a silver starfish and a freshwater pearl. It really is very beautiful.

This got taken because I was playing with light and a macro lens this afternoon.

I did, however, do two [...]]]> Today is an auspicious day. It’s the first day in about a month that no one else is screaming for me to do stuff for them. It’s a nice feeling, although I feel guilty that I’m not doing all the housework, but lounging around dreaming up excuses not to go swimming.

I did, however, do two things today. I broke a wine glass, and I bought cherries.

and I combined them into a photograph taken with my macro lens. It’s pretty obvious that I haven’t been taking photographs much lately, sorry about that, and all that jazz. I’ve not been carrying the camera around which is a bad thing.

Cherries rock.

They formed dessert today.

I haven’t read my feedreader lately so no interesting links to pass on at the moment,.

I go through flower phases.

but I think [...]]]> When I need flowers, I go to the Botanic Gardens because they are close to me. Today, however, the crew at Photowalk.ie had lined up a trip to Airfield Farm, somewhere near Dundrum. As I rarely venture southside, I was afraid I’d get lost finding it. Fortunately I didn’t.

I go through flower phases.

but I think of the shots I did, I like this one most.

There was quite a big turn out at Airfield today, lots of people I have not seen for a while. There will be a group shot up on photowalk.ie at some stage so I am not going to try and identify them all.

That macro lens is the most useful piece of kit I ever bought.

I [...]]]> I went to Howth this evening with the view to doing another timelapse. When I got there, I’d a different vibe, so I dropped the idea of running up to the lighthouse and trying to find somewhere “good” to shoot 1500 photographs of over 2 hours including sunset and got out the macro lens instead.

I didn’t expect much. There isn’t much in the way of pretty flora there; the light was interestingly meh, and not so many colours. Maybe that’s why I scored. Did better than the Irish rugby team anyway

I love this one:

It’s on the middle pier between the marina and the lighthouse, at floor level, sailing club side. I don’t usually notice these things.

Another one which is a little closer to my heart than the others is this one:

and I’m not really sure. In both cases, the 2.8 depth of field is really…addictive I would say.

I’ve other visions of things I want to do stuck somewhere on my mind. I’m not sure how I’m going to do them yet though but some of them involve shells.

Going back a little bit with this one. I’m pretty sure it was the macro lens, and I have no idea what I was doing playing with fire. Trying to light the gas fire I’d say; it typically took three to six attempts most days.

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 [...]]]>

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 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. [...]]]> 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.

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 [...]]]>

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 .

This was taken in my parents’ backgarden yesterday. It’s one of the first photographs I took for 2010. Although it didn’t really yesterday, it’s pretty close to how I feel right now. Tired and a little colourless. I drove from Cork today and although it didn’t take as long as it could have done given [...]]]>

This was taken in my parents’ backgarden yesterday. It’s one of the first photographs I took for 2010. Although it didn’t really yesterday, it’s pretty close to how I feel right now. Tired and a little colourless. I drove from Cork today and although it didn’t take as long as it could have done given the forecast, I’d have preferred not to hear RTE complaining about how ice covered the M7 was in Kildare. All it did was serve to wear me out before I got to the M7 in Kildare, which, when they were still complaining about it being completely iced up, wasn’t, actually, completely iced up. No matter. I’m here now. M50 in Dublin, on the other hand, and the carpark at the local Tesco…well they left me a bit cold.

The original plan was to write a piece on how wonderful Peter Lik is, but I left the book at home so that will have to wait for another day.