Tag Archive for 'fuji'

Bealach Na Ba

Bealach Na Ba, once the only road into the remote western shores town of Applecross. Now a ‘must ride’ road for those that prefer the two wheeled mode of transport. Think of the road like any country road around Wicklow, except on steroids. Oh and with a perfect surface. Oh and with no cow/sheep/pig shit in the middle of the road just as you carve through a bend at speed. Oh and… You get the idea. I’ll spare you from the ‘if we pay so much road tax, shouldn’t the roads be better’ rant.

Just like the panorama you’ve already seen except not a panorama. Next time we go up here, we’re bringing a picnic. Very entertaining watching the bikes sweep around the hairpin bends, followed by the cars almost having to perform three point turns to get around them. Not long before we started the climb up to the top, we all (six bikes) overtook a vintage truck crawling out of a nearby town. Some time later, and while standing at the top admiring the view, a local passed by in his car informing us there was an old truck coming up the road and if we wanted to ride the rest of the road in style (my words, not his), now was the time to leave. I was quite tempted to hang about and see exactly how someone in a 30ft long truck was planning on negotiating the switchbacks. My guess; Slowly.

So you get down to Applecross eventually and you do what pretty much everyone else does. You go to the Applecross Inn for lunch. The above is taken from the car park of the Inn. Apparently rooms are expensive but from what I can see, they’re worth it. The problem now is that as Bealach Na Ba is the only good way into Applecross, it’s also presumably the only good way out. You can travel back the way you came or as we did, you head north about 13 miles, then east about 11 miles until you get back to an A road.

When we came back to Dublin, I checked the price of land and/or houses in the area. Although I think I’d have to change career; I take it there isn’t much in the way of demand for network engineers up there.

Published on May 13, 2012 in Landscape, People, Scotland, Video and X100. 2 Comments

The Lower Lake

To aid in Julie producing a sofobomo entry this year, we took a spin out to Glendalough on Monday evening. First time in a few years I’ve been there when the sun is going down. Apart from the swarms of blood thirsty midges, it’s a great place to be when the light levels are dropping. The above, in case anyone cares, is the X100 at a 20th of a second, ƒ8 at 2500ISO. I think by the end of the trip I was pushing it up as far as 3200ISO while all the time being amazed at what this little camera can do.

My sofobomo isn’t going ahead, despite several half-assed plans on what I was going to do. Maybe next year.

Published on July 13, 2011 in Black and White, Landscape, Wicklow and X100. 3 Comments

Fort Camden

I’m not going to give a long, complicated spiel about the history of Fort Camden, you can read it for yourself over on the Rescue Camden website. My own history with Camden started many years ago being brought to Crosshaven by my parents, walking up point road to that formidable hill only to find the Goliath fort on the top of the hill. I can’t count how many times I’d stood on the grass bank outside the fort, straining to see inside some of the broken windows at the front of the building or crossing the rickety bridge (before it was sealed off) to peek through the bars of the white main gate.

It was one of the top things I always wanted to do, to get inside the fort and have a rummage around. I always imagined there were vast networks of tunnels, ammunition stores, underground rooms and other things that would amaze and delight my childhood self. I did finally get in there, albeit briefly, in July 2006 when the front gate was unlocked for some as yet unknown reason. The results of that short trip went up on Flickr. It didn’t disappoint and although much of it was overgrown, dangerous and some flooding made parts inaccessible, I was delighted to finally get in there. It still left me rather unsatisfied however, too many locked doors and welded shut gates left too many questions unanswered. I was always wondering what was inside that door or down that tunnel. Never having been much of a one for scaling large walls or breaking & entering, I had to leave with those questions remaining in my head.

It was always my hope that some group would finally take the initiative (given the required funding of course) and re-open the fort. So some years later, it finally happened. The Rescue Camden group have done simply amazing work in restoring parts of the fort back to a state whereby it’s safe and enjoyable for visitors. The shot on the right is the beginning of a long downhill tunnel that leads from the main complex down to a lower platform that served two piers. Much of the fort remains to be worked on, when walking around I noticed that several areas are marked for restoration in 2012.

The work that has already been completed is a credit to the group of volunteers and the friendliness and evident passion for the project shown by the people there when we visited on Saturday is fantastic to see after so many years of wishing for something like this to happen.

What this all does mean thankfully is that I can now bring a photowalk group to see the fort, something which I’m planning for Saturday 13th August. If you’re interested, details are over on Photowalk.ie

The rest of this set of photos from the visit on Saturday are on Flickr.

Published on July 5, 2011 in Black and White, Cork, Landscape, People and X100. 4 Comments

Iveagh Gardens

While Julie was doing her “turn this way, turn that way, smile” thing in Iveagh Gardens last weekend I took the opportunity to tag along and skulk around the gardens getting better acquainted with my X100. It’s not quite there, but it’s getting there. I spent most of the day at ƒ2…

I’ve only used the thing in jpeg mode so far but I’m quite liking how good Lightroom is to the files. Specifically what it’s doing when I apply a black & white preset to it. It’s bloody lovely. It also means that I haven’t run into the reported slow write times that people are seeing when using RAW, nor have I had to buy a big, expensive, super fast SD card to put into it. Yet anyway.

As you can see, I’ve already developed a habit of having my finger slightly obscuring the lens. It’s a bit of a learning curve going from a 5D with a 24-70 on it to something the size of two iphones taped together. The autofocus distance is going to take me a while to grasp. In AF mode it’s got a minimum focusing distance of 80cm. However in MF mode, you can focus down to about 40cm. Some people are saying you can get lower than that. I’ve been relying on the AF assist function (AFL/AEL button on the back) when in MF mode but it doesn’t seem to give any indication of when it’s achieved focus. Unless you leave the beep on of course. Using the EVF seems to make it easier to distinguish what’s what in MF mode. The OVF makes one tend to just hit the shutter button and hope for the best.

We’re getting along, I just need to start pointing it at more stuff more often. It’s going to be introduced to Cork over the weekend and see how that goes. Until then, my lovelies.

Published on June 30, 2011 in Black and White, Dublin, Landscape, Macro and X100. 0 Comments

Place to be

The weather is beginning to turn again and although some Donegal weather forecasting prophet has predicted more snow in the next couple of weeks, I think I’ll take a chance on a green Patricks day instead of a white one. So yeah, weather turning. Thoughts of getting back out and taking some landscapes. Loaded up lightroom and this jumped out of my catalog list. It’s from an almost forgotten roll of velvia I scanned some time back. I’m pretty sure this was taken at Barley lake in west Cork.

It also serves well to remind me that I haven’t done a tap this year photography wise and also that I’ve got a whole balls-load* of velvia to get through. I’ve never been much of a fan of slide scanning, mostly because it’s a pain in the arse to get the colours right on screen. Or maybe I’m just crap at it, that’s also a distinct possibility.

So this is the place to be. I might just print this one out and stick it to the side of my monitor in work. Possibly next to the countdown clock that I’ve set to mark my departure to the UK on my motorbike next month for a wee spot of touring.

*the new collective term for a lot of film to scan.

Published on March 8, 2011 in Bronica ETRS, Cork, Film and Landscape. 2 Comments