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.

I was supposed to go learning to drive racing cars today. It didn’t happen because of the rain which I exploited to take photographs of this morning. I took this with a macro lens instead.

Okay, so I was bored. I got out the macro and went playing. Theoretically i was going to play with nail varnish but somehow wound up playing with two model Renault Spiders I happen to have lying around. And a couple of candles. I played with fire as well.

I like this. I have absolutely [...]]]>

Okay, so I was bored. I got out the macro and went playing. Theoretically i was going to play with nail varnish but somehow wound up playing with two model Renault Spiders I happen to have lying around. And a couple of candles. I played with fire as well.

I like this. I have absolutely no idea why.

Mostly, when [...]]]> I was a bit bored this evening, so I decided to take out a couple of boxes of jewellery and play a little with the speedlite and the macro lens. I’m not very good at this sort of thing usually so it’s hard work for me to get anything back out of the shots.

Mostly, when I started it, earlier this evening, I wanted nice pretty little jewellery shots like this one:

which is nice, with lots of nice bokeh and shiney bits. It occurred to me as I dragged stuff out of the oldest of the jewellery boxes that while I don’t have lots of seriously pricy jewellery, I have lots of cheap stuff which has a far more valuable currency, and that’s memories.

So instead of doing a bunch of lousy product shots, I wound up shooting a story of parts of my life. I wear rings quite a lot – the ones I am wearing today I didn’t photograph. But others….

This I bought in a stall in Liffey Valley. The lable on the box is Quo Vadis. It’s a basic piece of costume jewellery that sit awkwardly around my neck. The last time I wore it was probably at a Christmas party last year.

This I bought in a stall at the central railway station in Milan. I think it cost about 6 euro. Italy is full of cheap junk jewellery like that – I’ve a bunch of others that I bought in a market in Rome for about 5 euro. I loved this although I think there’s some damage to it already. What I liked were the little hearts.

A lot of my favourite jewellery tends to be presents and this is one of them. It’s a pair of earrings bought by my niece when she was on holidays in Egypt a few years ago.

I think this belonged to my sister when she was a teenager. Loveheart knot rings were very common when I was about 8 and this one has somehow survived. The blue/silver earring below is in the same little ickle box that somehow passed into my possession when I was 16 years old.

This is another present from my sister, bought, I think, when I was 21 years old. I think she bought it in London around the same time as she bought the locket ring which has never had a photograph in it. Yet. And yes, the shot is a self portrait.

Two parts of my life here, well, three possibly. Hard to say in some respects. The treble clef was bought in a market stall in Covent Garden when I was out shopping with my cousin at some stage when she was a student nurse in LOndon and I had just finished my postgrad to be an interpreter. The crystals nearly all of which have separated from their settings were bought variously in Germany when I was 18 or in Brussels when I was 25. The stone with the bit of opal in it was bought in a mineral fair in Brussels. I bought other things there; I used to like going to mineral fairs like that. I have some moonstone from that day somewhere also. In the background, outside the sharp focus you can see a ring which my niece made for me when she was about 14 I think. There is also a blue earring which was a present and I think it might have been my niece again.

Interestingly enough, most of the stones that come my way tend to be vaguely blue in colour. I wonder sometimes if that says something about me.

This is my favourite photograph of the set. The ring is from Folli-Folie and was bought in the branch in Paris although I have another 3 rings which were bought in Athens that made it into the shoot but not onto the web. I need to clean my silver jewellery. All of it.

Old images of Cork from LIFE magazine via Donncha

Flooding in the SouthEast via the Big Picture.

Oops. Paudie’s lost his GoPro. I want one of those, I think.

Words fail me for the brilliance.

Also: Submission for the Red Bull Illume Extreme Sports [...]]]> Superb surf photography from – I think – Carolina – Matt Lusk – via Bryan Elkus

Old images of Cork from LIFE magazine via Donncha

Flooding in the SouthEast via the Big Picture.

Oops. Paudie’s lost his GoPro. I want one of those, I think.

Words fail me for the brilliance.

Also: Submission for the Red Bull Illume Extreme Sports photography contest starts tomorrow. Your deadline (and mine) is Jan 31st. When I get back from Sligo this weekend I will start working on this.

Photograph for today, from the snowy season earlier this year.

And finally, do you ever really want to blog the story behind a photograph but can’t out of consideration for other people touched by that photograph? It’s not this photograph; but another one which…maybe at the end of the year will appear on the Photographs of the year 2009.

I’m also looking at putting a POD calendar together. Details to follow the week after next (hopefully).

This is from Myrtleville around lunchtime. In truth I should have gone down there last night night when the tide was high.

and this is the same [...]]]> I had a little time to kill today so I went to Myrtleville, Fountainstown and Ringaskiddy this morning/afternoon, not quite sure because it being Sunday, time is nothing.

This is from Myrtleville around lunchtime. In truth I should have gone down there last night night when the tide was high.

and this is the same pile of rocks.

I don’t know if it was just me, or if it’s the usual excuse – “the light was grim” or what…but everything, even the flowers seemed to be a bit flat.

From Myrtleville I somehow wound up near Ringaskiddy on a beach that looked into Cork Harbour.

and took pictures of shells.

This, however, is my favourite find all day long. Another fish corpse.

somewhat completely corpsed out.

At some stage earlier during the year I went to the Botanic [...]]]> One of the bad things about having lost a complete site is that you’ve also lost a load of stuff you’d written about before. I don’t just do kitesurfers, and I don’t just do pinky coloured slow exposures. I do some macro as well.

At some stage earlier during the year I went to the Botanic Gardens. I may have gone twice, actually but from the more recent trip, I got some interesting things because there were more flowers. I think nearly all of these were shot with a 100mm macro 2.8. I love that lens. I didn’t expect to but such is life.

This is one of my favourites:

I’m not very good with actual flora info so I have no idea what most of these are.

although these are probably bluebells.

and I loved the depth of field here.

and this was just pure self indulgence. When I am bored I will post the lady bird brothel from the macro series.