Sitting at home on a Sunday morning, needing to get out for a few hours despite the cold and the threat of rain. Wiclow? Kildare? Wait, we haven’t been to the Botanic Gardens in ages! Every time we go up there, I seem to get the great notion to try something new. “This time, I won’t take photos of any plants”. How very obscure I’m sure. After all, plants are so mainstream. Things like that. This wasn’t much different, althoughRead More
I thought a little ‘year in brewing’ review was probably called for as the end of 2012 will mark my first year as a home brewer. If at the same time it serves to give a few of those currently on the fence about taking up the hobby a bit of a kick in the right direction, all the better. As I said, I started brewing at the start of 2012 after humming and hawing about it (as usual) forRead More
A quick Christmassy post before the annual pilgrimage to the rebel county for for festivities. About this time of year, wonderful things start happening. Possibly the most wonderful of all is when Julie announces that it’s time for some experimental gingerbread baking. This year, I took it as an opportunity to skulk about so I could both test my new camera and so that I could possibly munch on the rejects of the experimental gingerbread baking process. But first, theRead More
Doing a little bit of an end of year clearout of the Lightroom catalog, I found these had been sitting there for quite some time. I’m attempting to make a point of revisiting Fort Camden (which you’ve already seen plenty of in the past on this blog) every second or third time we travel to Cork for the weekend. This occasion was even more special as some new sections of the underground tunnels had been cleared out, restored to theRead More
Wait, whats your name again? It’s only been [counting on fingers] June, July, August, September, October, November; Oh almost 6 months since I last pressed the export button on a batch of photos. I suppose as long as I post once a year I can still refer to myself as a (photo)blogger in the sometimes polite circles of whippersnappers that know about these things. It seems the more cameras I buy, the less photos I take. The less photos IRead More
Julie heard of a ‘Vintage Market’ taking place last Sunday just outside Dublin at the ‘village of Lyons’ near Celbridge. Turns out the place is a wonderful spot, even if the vintage market turned out to be more of an antique fair. However, she did manage to pick up a couple of pieces of interest and while thumbing through some old posters and postcards, I found the below. It’s a postcard from Crosshaven, Co. Cork although I believe it’s beenRead More
Admittedly, I had intended on skipping the part of last Saturday’s photowalk that took place in the hotel. My intention was to come along after the start and meet the crowd in Kilruddery gardens for some sunny sauntering and leisurely photo taking. As if to motivate myself to take some photos, I even cleaned my 5D’s sensor for the first time since I bought it several years ago. On arriving suitably late in Bray and buying a cup of distinctlyRead More
Taken an age ago on one of the increasingly less frequent (I know, I know) romps around parts of Kerry that aren’t 1; Molls Gap, 2; Kenmare or 3; Killarney. Back when I was only too delighted to leave the car, throw the tripod & bronica loaded with velvia over my shoulder and go off in search of a tasty foreground rock. Nowadays, Velvia (at least the developing and scanning part of it) has gotten old to the point whereRead More
In Cork two weekends in a row (a rare treat) and the promise was made to seek out some bluebells to photograph. Currabinny woods has nealy always been a good spot, something I believe I pointed out on the morning we were setting out to go and take some photos. Without knowing I’d already jinxed the operation completely. Although there were bluebells, there was nowhere near the amount I’ve seen in previous years. So instead, I contented myself with usingRead More
A little bit delayed but better late than never. Premier Pro was driving me nuts so after upgrading to 12gb ram, it’s driving me slightly less nuts. Nuts slightly less. Either one. For some reason (after doing some minor colour corrections), it took about 1,000 times longer to export this video from Premier Pro than it did pre-corrections. I’ll figure that one out eventually. I’m still pretty much in the testing phases with these drift cameras, their first big tripRead More
It’s a while since I was last down in the War Memorial park taking photos. In fact the last time was probably some time in 2010 on a trip down there with Julie to photograph all the trees shedding their blossom. It’s somewhat appropriate to post this now given that I’ve we’ve gone back on the ol’ running (or at least shuffling along at slightly faster than walking pace). The War Memorial park is one of the top locations forRead More
If you cast your mind back to this and lived to see the other side of it, you’ll understand why I recently bought a couple of Drift Stealth cameras to make the filming process a little easier and a lot less stomach churning. The above was the maiden voyage and very much a learning exercise. I need to see what the hardware can do, what it can’t do and what I shouldn’t make it try to do before the ‘bigRead More
Or “a not so brief description of what I’ve been up to” possibly. Buying and drinking beer apparently. I have also been making it though. This was the fridge a couple of weeks ago after a particularly interesting visit to Sainsbury’s outside Belfast. I’ve tasted about half so far and there’s only one I took an instant dislike to. Yes, it was the Badger. I also took the opportunity to further my home brewing exercise with the purchase of aRead More
Insurance renewed, road tax paid. 6000 mile service not done but time to get photo rallying once again. We decided to start on Saturday and the trip out as far as Roscrea would work well given that I needed (wanted) to call into the home brew shop in Mountmellick to get some supplies (and another kit). Having ridden as far as Rathangan and completely forgot to stop at the rally point near Robertstown, we doubled back and eventually found theRead More
It’s probably as much about the pilgrimage to the end of the world as it is about the photography, but Sheeps Head is one hell of a location. It’s almost always as windy as hell (or as windy as I imagine hell might be on a windy day) down there, soggy or even sinky under foot for at least 30% of the walk and you never really know if one of the animals roaming the headland is going to takeRead More
Until I actually produce some new images in 2012 (I haven’t picked up the camera at all this year yet), I’m not going to stray too far from safe ground. The safe ground is currently Velvia. Going back over the old images I should have blogged months and sometimes years ago, I found these images from Powerscourt in Wicklow that sat in Lightroom being tweaked and fiddled with every now and then. Velvia has always been, for me at least,Read More
IMMA has become more or less that; A place to bring new or recently dusted off camera gear for a stroll around the grounds. No cat photos and not a focus chart in sight. Just a few from this visit before I drag and drop the set into the abyss that is the 2011 archive.
A trip to Avondale park last year with Vlastik where I took the opportunity to use a few of the rolls of velvia in the fridge. I thought I’d get rid of the remaining slide film as my intention was to develop it then sell the Jobo CPE I bought a couple of years ago on ebay. I think I’ve had my fill of developing anything other than black & white and the Jobo, tanks, chemicals and all the E6Read More
Grabbed this on my way out the door to work yesterday morning. Had I actually thought about what I was doing, I’d have put the 70-200 on Julie’s 5D2 and not my own 5D. It all went a bit wonky in post processing. It’s a bit of an odd feeling, going from shooting a photo to processing, uploading and posting within a 48 hour period. Worse still, I was almost tempted to post it last night. I don’t know ifRead More
My first post in December and I’m back with a couple of photos and a large bag of excuses. I became the newest splitter at the end of November when I left my old job and started a new one. I think either I underestimated how busy I’d be or grossly overestimated the ‘settling in time’ I’d end up taking because it’s been crazy pretty much since I started. Sadly, updating the blog has been far from top priority althoughRead More