Living for Light » ireland

Hurricane Katia, the remnants thereof I

Treasa — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:30:03 +0000

I spent some time in south west Ireland over the past few days.

This was taken from the prom in Lahinch and there will be a few more from there along with some from Inch County Kerry over the next day or so

All my life I’ve wanted to get a shot like this. In theory I had planned to go down to Doolin Point but there was general advice to people not to go to the Cliffs of Moher, and to be honest, it was so wild in Lahinch and I’d had a fairly rough drive down the country I just hadn’t the guts to get as far as Doolin. It may have been a mistake on my part; on the other hand I got photographs I couldn’t even imagine in Lahinch.

I managed to destroy myself, and three lenses while I was there. The 50-500 mm, in the end, was so coated in water that I couldn’t clear it enough to get the autofocus to work. So much of the next day was spent cleaning them all before taking them to Kerry for a trip to Inch.

Martti

Treasa — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:50:09 +0000

I hope I spelled his name right. I’m not good with Estonian.

In theory – because theory is a wonderful thing – I was planning on being in New York with the ASP event today. That didn’t work out according to plan for so many reasons it’s not funny. Instead I have crashed out in Dublin for a week doing Stuff. Important Stuff. Paperwork Stuff.

Today involved a lot of that stuff but at lunch time, I looked at the windmeter on Dun Laoghaire, picked up my camera and abandoned it all to hell. I took 150 photographs which isn’t loads but to be honest, I had other things on my mind. Dublin had some modicum of waves today and while I’d no great desire to try and play with the erratic wind, I did have a mind to go and get my bodyboard. For the first time in months I abandoned the camera in favour of sports. Can’t remember the last time that happened.

I haven’t really worked out which photographs I liked most.

but there are some nice things. Things that leave nice marks on my soul. With lots of people smiling.

Like so.

In other great news I got a Present today, a book called True which is a history of the first 10 years of North Kiteboarding. I didn’t know it existed until today, and once I found about about it, I had to have it. There are some fantastic photographs in it – in a way I’m sorry I didn’t have it when I was talking to Dublin Camera Club a few weeks ago. If you have a while free I strongly recommend you have a look at Christoph Maderer’s kitesurfing gallery which I will helpfully link to here. There are things in there that I would kill to do. I need some lighting solutions.

Yesterday I handed a disposable camera full of photographs of teddybears to Ronan Palliser of DCC for a disposable camera thing. I have no idea how the photos are going to shape out; I have never played with single use cameras and in the past when I have used compact cameras, I’d used them enough to predict with some accuracy what the outcome would look like.

I haven’t been taking a lot of photographs this year, and very, very few sports photographs it has to be said. When you have a day like today, you know, it gets to be worth it.

I’m going to be mad stiff tomorrow thanks to the bodyboarding though. Ouch.

Board grab.

Treasa — Sun, 29 May 2011 17:50:56 +0000

The Battle for the Bay was on in Dublin this weekend. Normally I’d be down there but this weekend I had too many other things on. So I went to the party last night and spent a couple of hours on the beach. I still got more than 250 photographs to sort through. Most of them were of Colly Murphy.

Colly is one of the people I know longest on the kitesurfing scene. Over the past 8 years, he has featured in some of my favourite photographs and he is an all round really nice guy too. I have some lovely photographs of him from today, including some action shots from the water. Photographs like this make me happy and I think/hope they make kitesurfers happy too.

Because I missed most of the action this weekend, I wasn’t completely swamped in photographs (250 is definitely a lot less than the 1000 a day I used to shoot at competitions).

There was a brilliant atmosphere on the beach, and a large number of the few people who braved the wind down there this year spent their time at the water’s edge, just watching. Check this out:

I’d love it if Dollymount could look like this all the time. That sand is almost Caribbean-esque in colour. Well, except the bit that used to be wet. There was a comparatively low tide there this afternoon. I don’t like shooting low tide so much. But look at the colour of the water too. That’s almost Mediterranean-esque.

During that recent television interview, something which I said but which got cut from the final piece was that I genuinely felt we who lived in Dublin were really lucky to have access to some beautiful beaches, not that far from the city centre. Dollymount and Poolbeg beaches are practically city centre in their own right; Sandymount isn’t exactly far off either and they are all lovely beaches. Today, the water on Dollymount was sparklingly clear. I don’t think I’d ever seen it just so crystalline.

Because I missed most of the show this weekend, I missed out on some very cool wipeouts too. I like this however – the water is glittering. Not absolutely certain who is buried under there but I think it might be Eamon Armstrong. Not absolutely certain because the board looks wrong.

Glengarriff/Cork-Kerry border

Treasa — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 22:30:26 +0000

When I was down around Bantry Bay the other day, it was quite hazy. I actually really like the haziness of this picture – mainly because when I have tried to shoot things like this before, I’ve just failed to get it right. But I like the layers in this.

There seems to be something about me and layers – a lot of the music I listen to involves complex layers of sound – one key example would be Chronologie 6 by Jean-Michel Jarre and a lot of what Conjure One come out with. This may be why I listen to quite a lot of piano concertos by the more romantic composers too (my favourite pieces are Concerto No 2 by Rachmaninoff and Concerto No 5 by Saint Saens) and also some more obscure electronic music. I’m not sure.

There’s an extraordinarily talented French nature photographer by the name of Vincent Munier whose photographs of the Vosges Mountains in France are really well worth looking at. Because of the way his site is laid out I can’t point you straight at that particular gallery, but even so, if you’ve an idle few minutes, wandering around his gallery is a rewarding experience. The above photograph was inspired by some of his light and shade and frankly, as it occurs to me, there is one of his which I’d like to buy for my walls as well. It featured three migrating geese and I am pretty sure he created the photograph in Japan.

Margie, the tourist season has started again…

Treasa — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:37:13 +0000

I thought what with OPW keeping the island closed until 1 April we were safe, but feckit, there’s a boat load of ‘em already.

________________________

I went to Glengarriff yesterday just because I could. While I was there, there were actually boat tours – I thought it was a bit early but since 6 of us did a nice cruise around the harbour to see the seals – and believe me there were lots of them – clearly it’s starting to pick up.

West Cork is beautiful. Any free weekends I’ve had in the last few years – and there seem to have been precious few of them – have seen me over in Mayo a lot, or in Kerry. Last week I think I scrope a trip to Sligo and one to Galway as well. Frankly they are all beautiful but they are in second place. I think I want to buy a house in Timoleague which is really pretty. It’s near Courtmacsherry.

Yesterday I took a lot of photographs of seals. Here’s another one.

“Christ can’t a man sunbathe in peace!”

Inchydoney, 2011.

Treasa — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:35:17 +0000

I’m back. There are waves out there and I really have to figure out a better place to try and shoot the sunset from. As the rally was on today, I didn’t do too much exploring. In the way of surf photography, not too much. There were six optimistic souls in the water for an hour or too today; they didn’t really score.

Outside is the sound of the sea though; and I love it.

I brought Shooting the Curl with me because I haven’t really had time to read it and I have to say that some of it is inspirational. It features some stunning work from Mickey Smith (hope I got that right) and also, Clark Little. Somehow I missed that he was involved in that book, and they helpfully have a bunch of photographs that I utterly love from him. Not too many photographers that I’d displace my own stuff for aside from the long adored Philippe Plisson but this guy…yeah I think a print could be called for.

I have my camera with me here in West Cork (yeah, that was taken with the Canon and not the iPhone). I do not, however, have the charger for it so I could be slightly screwed if I get a hot surfing day. Even if I don’t it’s so beautiful down here that….frankly how can I not?

Planning to head towards Skib and Rosscarbery over the next day or so although given that I am staying in one of teh swankier spa hotels in the country that may well be tomorrow afternoon. Sunset is around 7 which will feature in the plans anyway.

The key feature in the photograph above – I feel the need to explain for once – are the cars. I usually go out of my way to avoid cars in photos but…Inchydoney was busy today. Even at 6 when I went looking for something to eat, the place was packed and there was precious little room in the carparks. It’s very much a place that people come and spend days at, but not so many nights at. So despite the majesty of the sky and the hills and the water, and basically mother Nature’s bit of the equation, the theme of the photograph is actually Daytrippers.

standing off the shore

Treasa — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:38:36 +0000

On the beach are about 15 kitesurfers, pumping kites, talking about what size they’ll put up, who’s going to try the new 2011 Cabrinhas. The kites are pretty. The two Cabrinha team riders are on the beach. The weather is hugely different to what they are used to; Susie tells me she spends most of her time in the Dominican Republic, Cameron tells me he’s from Hawaii. He points out it rains there too.

But I only ever see the sun shining there. I want to go to Hawaii sometime; would love to see Pipeline some time.

For now, however, it’s Sutton, Dublin, and I’m sure that for some people, that’s exotic enough. Different, at least, and today, September day, the sun is shining. That matters a whole lot to me. It’s easier to do crazy things when the sun is shining.

Like ask the muse “do you have enough wind to jump over me today?”

He doubts it but points out Susie probably has. I’m nervous. I’ve never photographed her before, have no idea what to expect when she gets in the water. But she’s game to give it a shot, if I will. So I do. I go and pull on a 5mm windsurfing suit, and the walk from the car to the beach, well it’s warm; not surprisingly, because the sun is shining very brightly. Welcome, but warm in a 5mm wetsuit, out of the water. It won’t last long; I know this. I’ve done this already. Before. It never stays warm.

I can never imagine what it looks like, this crazy girl in a wetsuit, and 1600E worth of unprotected camera gear around her neck, walking out into the sea. It’s a measure of people’s relative risk assessment skills that even the kitesurfers think I am certifiably insane. Sometimes I have a helmet with me too; I got that because Francois Colussi insisted on it when I started doing this. This time, however, because I wasn’t supposed to do this; it wasn’t part of the plan, I didn’t have the helmet. But that didn’t really matter because Susie has wake bindings. Her board is unlikely to come flying at me unless she’s coming with it too. And that would be some sight to see. And shoot. And hope the memory card survives.

You’ve no idea what it’s like, however, when you walk out into the middle of the sea, water about a metre to 1.25 deep around you. Your senses change. Camera is held completely to your chest, lens pointing up, your back is to where the waves are coming from you. And the sound drops right off. All you really hear is the water lapping around you. From somewhere you learn to know when to hold the camera way over your head to protect it from a rogue wave.

The aeroplanes flying overhead, on their way to Dublin Airport, are curiously silent. You cannot hear the DART trains on their way to Howth. Even the voices on the beach that you expect to carry over the water to you…are curiously deadened. I don’t notice them. I don’t even notice any seabirds which may be flying around. There’s just me, some waves, and occasionally, the whoosh of the wake of a kiteboard as it passes.

You might just hear a yelp of joy, or pain as someone lands, or crashes on a jump. Or the thwack of a kite crashing heavily on the water following a wipe out. But mostly it’s quiet. And a strange kind of lonesomeness.

People wave at me as they pass. On occasion, someone will speak to me. But their voices are almost like ambulances; the sound disappears almost faster than they do.

Someone told me today that they assumed I shot from a boat.

I don’t. But that’s the shore I walked from to take this shot.

I love what I do. On days that the sun shines; that I come away with some special things, things that I know you have to work to get, work out how to get – you will never know how much time I spent pouring over wide angle shots of everything to learn how to see through that lens, how much time I spend watching people cruising up and down, not even jumping, working out how to take these shots – I love what I do.

Every single hour I spent on the beaches of Ireland learning how to do this, how to judge the risks to me and to my camera (and yes, I have lost a camera to this) comes down to maybe 20 photographs that even now still blow my mind and the hope, the massive hope that it’s not all over yet. That there are still other pictures, other beaches out there to shoot.

Beaches

Treasa — Sun, 09 May 2010 12:48:54 +0000

I now have an ebook up on the site which has 25 pictures of Irish beaches. The link is here and you are more than welcome to have a look at it. It is in pdf format and as advance working, it is a 31 MB file.

As a taster, here is a look at Inchydoney in Cork.

It’s a beautiful day in Dublin today but by way of stuff to do I am sitting here building new websites and trying to sort out a few online details. There will be a new gallery going up on my main official website later on today and at the moment I am sorting out some other blog related details. But I think the garden is calling quite loudly.

Kitesurfer, Sligo

Treasa — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:55:22 +0000

The May bank holiday saw the kitesurfing bandwagon roll into Rosses Point, a beach I’ve visited, oh, once in my life as far as I can remember.

I like this one. I like a lot of the other shots I took yesterday as well but this one is the (current) standy out one.

Theoretically I was going to write a whole lot about all this but frankly, it’s easy. You point camera at kitesurfer, more or less into sun. You push the curve to the right. You drop a black and white layer down on top and then you get rid of the extraneous space on the side.

Later, you wonder about adding a warming photofilter. Then, 50 odd photographs later, you forget. The boys, for the most part, were complaining about scrappy conditions. The wind on high seemed to be lighter than the wind on low. Not one kitesurfer said anything other than “the wind is lousy”. Hence, not too many of them were doing aerial acrobatics. I was kind of glad I hadn’t lugged the 500mm zoom around with me. It’s nice being able to lift the camera by yourself, really.

The beach itself is really nice and I took a photographs for the purposes of the [I don't want to look at it now] ebook I’m putting together with pictures of Irish beaches in it [no seriously]. It wasn’t what you’d call busy either.

Anyway, 200 ISO so that I could up the shutter speed which left me with horrendously high shutter speeds on occasion. I mean, I don’t often see the 8000.

I’m starting to wonder about the 40D. Possibly I should have started to wonder about it before now. Its colours are very definitely flat. I seem to spend a lot more time postprocessing photograph jpgs than I did on the 350D and no RAW leaves the world without quite a bit of colour correction. That doesn’t matter so much if you’ve taken 80 photographs. On the days that you’ve taken more than 300 (like yesterday) and more than 1000 (regularly on a day in Dublin), that sucks.

I may start investigating the 7D.

Francois Colussi out wide in Sutton

Treasa — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:07:57 +0000

I really haven’t been out taking many kite photographs much for the last year or two, and most of what I have done has been fairly easy for want of a better description with a few key exceptions. This, however, is one of the older photographs, and it dates from about 2007 or 2008 when I bought a 10-20 mm lens. The weather was mixed on the day, blazing sunshine interspersed with mad clouds. There weren’t too many kitesurfers out, mainly because there wasn’t too much wind. Francois spent most of the day launching off the outflow pipe on Sutton Beach that day and that’s what allowed me to do things like this.

This is one of my favourite photographs and one of my friends reckons it might be the best photograph I’ve ever taken. I’m not so sure I agree but I have to say that there are things I like about this photograph and it’s one of the few hanging in my house at present. I like the extremes of contrast in it.

I got some great photographs that day mainly because the light was so absolutely fantastic. From a kitesurfing view though, there isn’t much to run around about; there was so little wind.

I’m in the process of looking at putting new portfolios together- this I think will make it in.