This photograph is of the derelict baths in Dun Laoghaire. Having done a little reading up on them lately I have learned that they were still open until 1997. Although that’s 12 [...]]]> I appear to have lost the ability to spell the name of that place correctly and my typing isn’t so hot right now either.

This photograph is of the derelict baths in Dun Laoghaire. Having done a little reading up on them lately I have learned that they were still open until 1997. Although that’s 12 years ago, it feels quite recent because I was already an adult by then and I was done with trips 1 and 2 to university. Since then, they have slowly been decaying and are generally the subject of much wrangling about what to do with the site. In a way I think it’s criminal that they’re just there. You couldn’t say they are dying a slow death because to be frank, they are pretty dead. Time is just picking the scraps from the carcass of them. I’m told if you get access to the site, it’s an unholy mess inside and very unsafe. I’m not sure I’d want to try. I would like to shoot from the sea though, if the tide is ever out far enough for me to get an interesting angle.

I never knew they were there. They cropped up when I was researching the baths in Blackrock which I passed on a DART going to Dalkey a few months ago.

When I saw this lot on Sunday I didn’t really want to take a picture of just some dereliction. I wanted to try and extract some last glory – make the old derelict things look beautiful, if only to remind you that once they weren’t derelict and once, they had some sort of social value. AbandonedIreland have been in there and their comments reveal that the sort of social value it has now is not perhaps the most edifying.

Apparently, when they were closed in the late 1990s, the plan was to put a new larger water funpark there. I was out of the country at the time so know very little about this. That plan met with massive objections. I’m not sure why – it would have been a distillation of what was already there. Since then, there have been other plans involving, apparently – and I find it hard to believe apartments and hotels. I may even have seen mention of a carpark. If I were to choose something, it would be comparatively lowrise, exploiting the beautiful entrance building which I will shoot at some stage this weekend if the weather is okay, and I’d like to see some sort of tea rooms with balconies and stuff. It’s in a stunning location.

So to the photograph. Well, the desaturation was done in RAW so that I could play with the colour temperature sliders. I blew out the reflection of the sky in one of the pools so burned that back in. I did some curves work which put – somehow – a blue tint on the photograph, so I dumped another black and white layer on top of that. I tinted that with the default colour to get the historic postcard feel. That was pretty much it.

They tell you that you can’t get a good photograph out of a bad photograph. I’m beginning to question that wisdom.

When I got to Sandymount this morning, the time was in and this hampered my plans completely both in [...]]]> I don’t usually do the urban decay shots but for one or two reasons I’ve been out checking parts of abandoned Dublin out lately. Today I was in Sandymount and Blackrock. I was also in Dun Laoghaire.

When I got to Sandymount this morning, the time was in and this hampered my plans completely both in Sandymount and Blackrock. So I only came back with a handful of shots. Both of these are from Blackrock

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As far as I am aware, the baths in Blackrock are owned/controlled by Treasury Holdings now, pending redevelopment. They’ve been derelict for a long time but are popular with urban artists and people taking photographs of urban decay. Access involves climbing. Neither of these photographs were taken from inside the compound because the tide was in and whatever access you can get requires the tide to be out. The bottom photograph was taken from the footbridge that gives access. The top photograph was taken from the northern end of the path that runs behind it.

When we went back at low tide, I looked to see if there was any reasonable access from the seaside. By reasonable, I mean that I could get in without risking re-occurring a frequently occurring knee injury right now. It’s not looking good for that though.That being said, there were two people in there so it is possible. I just don’t see that it’s really worth it for what I was looking for.

Instead, I’m more interested in the possibilities offered by the old baths in Sandymount instead.

They are completely open to the sea on the waterside which means when the tide recedes, there’s a lot less water than there is in Blackrock. There are also far fewer sand deposits. What I could see of Blackrock meant that the walls for the most part don’t look very high. Lower than the average man’s height anyway.

This actually matters to me and the reason I was out was to check stuff like that out.

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I want to go back there. Beyond the photographs I was initially planning, I have even more ideas.

Someone told me that it was quite an achievement to make rubbish and refuse look beautiful. I wanted – at the time that I shot this – to create something a little different – yes I knew I was going to be taking photographs of piles of rubbish but I wanted to create as big [...]]]>

Someone told me that it was quite an achievement to make rubbish and refuse look beautiful. I wanted – at the time that I shot this – to create something a little different – yes I knew I was going to be taking photographs of piles of rubbish but I wanted to create as big a dichotomy between the subject and the effect as possible.

This is rubbish. It will never be anything other than rubbish and it absolutely doesn’t look in place in this shot. But somehow, it looks engaging…and maybe if it brings people to pick up their rubbish and take it away, then the shot will have some worth. I don’t know. Maybe the right people don’t see it.

I’ve just had a thought about the photograph…I may actually turn it into a poster.

The bridge is still under construction; so it’s jailed behind bars for the moment. I really can’t remember how I took the photograph, but the processing involved some messing with the levels of black in the image, rejigging of the white balance, [...]]]> This is also from the Scott Kelby World Photowalk day which John McAwilliams organised.

The bridge is still under construction; so it’s jailed behind bars for the moment. I really can’t remember how I took the photograph, but the processing involved some messing with the levels of black in the image, rejigging of the white balance, and then some desaturation.

I can’t quite figure out what I think of this concept to be honest; it’s possible that my view is slightly coloured by being a little underwhelmed by the last Kelby book which I read (about photography rather than Photoshop); that being said, some [...]]]> The Scott Kelby annual Worldwide Photowalk was a couple of weeks ago.

I can’t quite figure out what I think of this concept to be honest; it’s possible that my view is slightly coloured by being a little underwhelmed by the last Kelby book which I read (about photography rather than Photoshop); that being said, some of his online tutorials are great.

Anyway, my sites started keeling over around then, so stuff didn’t get posted and fell between cracks. Most people who were on the walk will have seen the two I eventually handed over for judgment but I’m going to post them here.

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It rained like hell at the start of that walk, and it also brought me back around the area that I had very recently nightwalked both in my own right and with Kyle Tunney, to the extent that I felt like I had an illicit relationship with the sculpture of the docker hauling in the ropes on the south quays.

Anyway, the nails were shot using Canon’s really nice 100mm 2.8 macro which I bought when I bought a new camera in February, and the Connolly Station shot of the posters and the people sheltering from the teeming rain with the standard kit lens that comes with a 40D. I actually like that lens a lot.

In fact, I’d done a photo walk there myself a few days earlier, and had shot it slightly differently on that occasion.

This is actually a piece of public art which I was not aware of until that first photowalk. I do not do a lot [...]]]> This is from Kyle Tunney’s Evening photowalk a few weeks ago.

In fact, I’d done a photo walk there myself a few days earlier, and had shot it slightly differently on that occasion.

This is actually a piece of public art which I was not aware of until that first photowalk. I do not do a lot of flash photography although strangely enough I do own more than one flash, so most of these things tend to be somewhat experimental.

Anyway, Kyle has some photographs from some of the other participants there on this page here if you’re interested in having a look.

Also, if you’re interested, occasionally I organise photowalks via twitter and via the Photobuddies thread on boards.ie/photography.