About new year time last year I was at my brother in laws and we did a spot of Clay Pigeon shooting. At the time I took this.

Well, since we spent Christmas at their house, it only seemed reasonable to go out and shoot some more. After all, you really need to keep on top of that Clay Pigeon population in case they… erm… they… OK. So after two days of feasting, pretty much any excuse to get outside works.

Continuing my current obsession with mono conversion. I’ll not get into how much tweaking the image got, but I’ll own up to moving the exploding clay a little (It was in the shot, just a little more to the right than I liked and I wanted to crop it a little).

there’s a photo essay competition coming up soon and I’m seriously considering using this image in it – I’ve abut 15 images of clay pigeon shooting from the last two outings.

Been a while since I posted something just because it’s Friday…

If you hate HDR, look away now…

 

 

(I kind of expect this to turn up on one of those 50 images that prove HDR is evil sites….)

I’m playing with a new add on for Photoshop (Well, new to me anyway).

I’ll put a write up about my thoughts with it later in the week, but I wanted to throw up an image now so I could look at it in the cold light of day and see what I think.

Sometimes with these things I can get a little target blind, seeing only what I want to see, not the actual picture as a whole. It’s good to reflect a little.

Anyway, this picture was originally taken in December 2007. It’s always been on my pile of “I wish it was better…”, it seemed like a good sample image for the new utility.

One of my favourite hobbies these days is reviewing pictures I took a few weeks earlier to see if anything jumps out or if some new technique I learned about suddenly gives me a way to improve on something.

This photograph, taken a week or two ago at the tall ships didn’t really say much to me then, though I do quite like the fact it shows the modern shipyards through the rigging of the older boats bow.

I was just playing with some HDR stuff and suddenly it seems to get a nice life to it.

OK, so the pictures for the Peoples Photography exhibition are picked and sent to the lab, the mounts are ordered and apart from a night of framing I’m all sorted. Sort of…

Time to actually “take photographs” again.

One of the nice things about being out and about with a photography club is the availability of unwilling subjects to pose for shots!

More beaches. More sunset. More…

I’m suspicious my monitor is set too dark based on some of these images I’ve been looking at on other pc’s. Plans are afoot to check this, so bear with me.

I’ve been sitting on this picture for a while now. I knew I wanted to try and process it through HDR – even when taking it I took three exposures to give me the capacity.

I find shooting into a sunset like this incredibly difficult. The last rays of the sun either cause the shot to under-expose or leave the sky a horrid washed out white mess. Taking this as three exposures allowed me to find the best of each world, and whilst I normally wouldn’t go this extreme with HDR, I do like the finished result quite a bit.

The last three pictures I’ve posted have been processed in HDR and I think this is my favourite. It does give images a nice feel, although I’ll be the first to admit they do drift away from “what the eye saw”.

It’s typical that now the competition season is over in the club, I start producing pictures I’d like to use. Still, there’s always next year.

My work is taking me to the west of Ireland from time to time. As a result, I’m seeing parts of the country that I’ve never really seen before. All I can say is when it comes to pretty views and interesting old castles/forts/churches they have more than their fair share.

I don’t know why, but these always look better in black and white to me.

Since Canada, I’ve tended to keep my camera close when I’m riving and know I can stop for a few moments here and there. Hence the Tassagh Viaduct shot a few weeks back and now this one. One thing I did at Tassagh and forgot to do here was take a quick shot of a nearby sign to give me an idea where it was.

So, if you want to visit this place, you need to take the road from Galway to Westport/Castlebar and keep an eye out your right window. Sorry I can’t be more specific!

Hope you’re all having a good weekend

Reviewing my photos from Canada, I noticed I’d passed a milestone without any fanfare.

So, with much fanning of fares, here is the ten thousandth picture I’ve taken with my Canon 400D

You’d think a milestone shot would be better.

I’m playing around with photoshop again, thanks to a book a friend (yes, the turd commenter) loaned me. I’ll discuss the book in more detail another time, for now I just want to show you the impact of some of its suggested workflow.

Original Image

Final Image

I’m kind of curious what people think. Does the final image work better than the original?

I’m in danger of turning this blog from photography to “My Holiday Snaps”, so I promise there won’t be too may more Canada pictures here.

However, this picture kind of summed up one of the issues that I find most frustrating with photographing landscapes.

You travel 4,000 miles to some of the most majestic scenery i the world. You spend three or four days in the place. You wait and you pray…

And not once does the sky clear and give you the light the scene so richly deserves.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just not good enough to make a grey sky day seem amazing (and trust me the views were still great). Sometimes though, I think you just have to shoot and be dammed.

So I did.

It’s absolutely amazing the difference 10 minutes can make. 10 minutes earlier and the sun would have been much nicer.

Mind you 10 minutes before that it was chucking it down.

And 10 minutes after I took this it was pitch black and chucking it down.

The Irish Marine Institute, Galway Bay.

I didn’t appreciate how bright snow had the potential to make a shot until this week.

I also discovered getting wet knees for your art is no fun either.

(f/7.1, 1/250sec, 50mm, ISO-200, 6/02/2009)

I was lucky enough to get the chance to take a walk through Carrickfergus recently. To be truthful, I spent most of my time photographing the castle.

It's interesting to approach an object and try to photograph it from different angles rather  than just do the tourist walk up, shoot a picture, walk away thing.

I guess this is the traditional view of the castle.

It's certainly the one that appears on most of the postcards. I guess I could have cloned out the van and cars, but if Carrickfergus see fit to let cars park there then it's not up to me to doctor them. Besides, I'm not actually that happy with the shot anyway.

Walking along the harbour wall a bit and you get this view.

I much prefer this view of it. OK, the positioning i a little extreme on the left of frame, but it gives it more context and I like the harbour wall in the foreground as well.

Alternatively walking out the promenade (if you can call it that) you get a nice panorama. (Or at least you would have if I had of had more time and patience. (I was passing the castle again later in the day and the sunset was looking good - I only had a minute to stop the car and take the picture free hand (hence the lack of sharpness) and couldn't really shift my viewpoint far (hence the signpost), but still....)

 

Oh, and if you want to know more about the Castle try here or here.

I still don't have a real eye for what will work and what won't. I guess that's a lot to do with using a digital camera - you can always rely on click and hope since a picture is (essentially) free. It's a bad habit though, and one I'm going to have to keep working on.

Sometimes pictures just work in mono.

I think this one does anyway.

(f/4.5, 1/400sec, 24mm, ISO-100, 12/4/08)

I've a confession to make. When I'm using the tripod I always take three images, bracketing my chosen picture by +1/-1 Ev using the auto exposure bracketing in the camera.

There's a couple of reasons for this.

1. It allows me to play in HDR land with pictures. (I've stopped posting a lot of those as they can feel over processed and 'samey')

2. It allows me to see what a modification to the settings might have got me - I'm still learning here, so this is useful.

If memory is cheap for you, I'd suggest you do the same. It really isn't as much of a waste of card space as you think.

 

On other matters, with the number of club competitions I've been entering, I've taken to buying mounts pre-cut and in bulk. This has left me in even more of a 3*2mode than before - If all my mounts are already cut to 12*8 apertures (maximum entry is 16*12 including mount), then I tend to only see a 3*2 ratio picture as a potential entry.

So much so, that a digital entry I submitted this week was in that aspect ration as well. Even though in a slightly different ratio it might have been much nicer.

Well, tonight I'm breaking my 3*2 habit.

And posting an HDR picture.

So there.

 

I guess I'm going to have to cut my own boards.

(f/18, 30secs, 14mm, ISO-100, 02/08/2008)

Sometimes pictures develop long after you've stopped fiddling with them. I hear DJ's talking about a record being a "grower, not a show-er" occasionally. I guess the same can be true for a photograph.

Anyway, this photograph was taken in early August. At the time I thought it was OK, maybe a decent example of slow shutter speeds making water a bit like smoke. But it kind of left me cold.

When it came time to send pictures away to print, this was number 30 of 30, just making it in because 30 seemed like a nice round number for printing and I was kind of curious about what it would look like.

In the Peoples Photography exhibition, it just slipped onto the list because I had space for one more portrait image.

And people liked it. Probably more than me.

Then this week, I found myself having to select an image for a digital presentation competition (images presented via projector rather than as prints or slides) and once again this kind of slipped past me and into the selected pile.

Then it slipped past the judges and into their submissions pile.

I look at it now, and where it originally left me cold, it now leaves me calm. Maybe that's why it's growing on me. Maybe that's what other people feel when they see it. I've certainly no idea.

If you read about landscape photography, you'll always hear about the golden hours. Those times around sunrise and sunset when the sky is perfect, full of colour, the sun low in the sky.

The annoying thing about this is that those golden hours are also at the most inconvenient times of the day!

Well, I made myself a promise this winter that I'd try to get out once a week during those golden hours and see if I could make anything of them.

This week I tried around the Harland & Wolff, Belfast ship yards and the Titanic Quarter. (Remember, when the people of Belfast finished her she was unsinkable, it took an Englishman to wreck it!)

 

(f/16, 1.6secs, 20mm, ISO-200, 28/10/2008)

OK, I've just sent the chosen pictures to the printer for the water competition. I'm not hugely enamoured with some of them and there of my original list of planned pictures, I think I managed 1 or maybe 2.

I'm not going to list them just yet. I want to see the printed articles and collect my thoughts on the subject before getting into it again.

So in the meantime...

Here's another "Dam View" from my day in the Mournes.

(f/8, 1/125sec,  22mm, ISO-200, 27/09/08)

 

One of the biggest problems I face when shooting freehand is getting horizons level. It's even harder when nature conspires to put mountains in your way (and then doesn't even make them flat). It's certainly one of the times I love the capacity of digital for post processing, turning a simple mistake into an acceptible picture.

It's different when shooting on a tripod. For the sake of a few pounds, it's worth investing in a camera spirit level. Whilst loads of tripods come with a level, it's pointless if your head allows any sort of tilt. And besides, when people see it, they'll get a laugh out of it if nothing else.

It's hard to imagine that less than 2 weeks ago I was wandering around a mountain in a pair of shorts...

(f/11, 1/125sec, 70mm, ISO-400, 27/09/08)

You'd think with a water theme competition coming up I'd be happy about the rain. You'd be quite wrong.

This became something of a mantra on Saturday while in the Mournes. Normally just about the time we headed into the wilds, got stuck in some bog or came across the skull of a sheep

With the skull being a grotesque and morbid sight, we all took photos...

(f/8, 1/200sec, 22mm, ISO-200, 27/09/08)

I think this might have been slightly better if the angle on the skull had of been higher. But I quite liked the out of focus grasses in the foreground.

Of course, if you put a Selenium tint on it, the world goes very Blair Witch.

When I first subscribed to a photo magazine many moons ago, they supplied me with a filter holder as my "free gift". At the time I'd bought a handful of filters but never really used them.

Knowing that our trip into the Mournes was going to involve a lake or a reservoir or some other body of water (just hopefully not my body in water), I decided to take them along.

In the end, I only remembered I had them two minutes before we left a rest stop at the side of a lake. I quickly pulled an ND filter (not a grad) from my kit and put it on the camera, just to see what would happen.

(f/18, 0.6sec, 13mm, ISO-200, 27/09/08)

Looking back now, I wish I'd taken the same shot without the filter, just so I could compare the difference. It wasn't this dark and I have a feeling the camera doesn't measure exposure well with a filter in front of the lens. Possibly it translates it as an evening shot and I should have pushed the shutter time up further to see the difference.

Still, as an experiment goes, I quite like the result. It's pretty amazing the effect a polariser and a long(ish) exposure can have on a body of water.

I am in pain. Not the sort of pain you get from a hard days night. More the sort of pain you get when you haul your old, overweight, carcass around something like 18 kilometres of mountains which only seem to go up! Added to that, this carcass stupidly decided to haul camera, lenses and tripod with him.

So, and let me make this abundantly clear, I am only typing this through the magic of ibuprofen. If it gets a little woozy, just ignore me...

I'd never been into the Mourne Mountains before, apart from a few trips as a child to the more accessible parks and places. Not having the first clue about hill safety or map reading or where to go while up there I never considered it an option really.

Thanks to Dean at Ulster Rambles  I was able to organise a day trip which took 6 of us up into the mountains yesterday. Deans expert guidance and knowledge of the area meant we all got a good challenging walk and lots of interesting asides and explanations. He also got us to climb Slievenaglogh for a view which was to die for. (I'd even say he organised perfect weather for us, but I'm claiming credit for that...).

I'm working through my 200 and something photos now, but in the meantime, here's a shot of the Mourne Wall.

(f/8, 1/200sec, 22mm, ISO-400, 27/09/08)

I'd spent a lot of time before this considering what to carry. given the weight of my camera kit these days, I knew it was unrealistic to take it all plus the waterproofs we wouldn't need. So, I quickly rationalised it down to two lenses - my 10-22 and my 55-250. I figured this covered off all the likely focal lengths I'd want. Also, after much debate, I took my tripod.

Weight was a major issue for me the entire day, but surprisingly the tripod and backpack wasn't the worst of it. Actually having the camera around my neck for 8 hours was the biggest issue. It was much more awkward to put the camera away than just carry it, but by the end of the day my neck was throbbing. (Thanks to Jon who carried it for me for the last part of the day).

As I climbed along the Mourne wall up Slievenaglogh  I'd really considered the sensibility of bringing the tripod. But, sometimes the experts are right. If you're going to take landscape photographs it's such a valuable addition to your kit bag.

In fact, the only part of my kit that failed me yesterday was my...erm...my trousers... Yep, my trousers. I'd love to say I ripped them in some sort of rugged "wrestling a mountain bear" type story, but no. I ripped the crotch clean out of them by lifting my leg to high to climb up onto a stone. By the time I got to the top of Slievenaglogh  I was getting a little too close to nature and the split rang from zipper to beyond my right knee. If ever Geoff needed to secure a place in heaven, he did it when he produced a spare pair of shorts.

So, would I do it again?

Yes. In a second.

I know people who walk in the Mournes a lot and I know people often go up there without guides (or even proper shoes). But for me, having Dean lead the party meant there was never pressure of checking where we were, keeping an eye on the time, fearing being left behind or even worry about a fall (and I had a couple). Walking off path, through heathers and bogs and over (OK, through) rivers was brilliant. I'd recommend using his services in a second. In fact I'm already planning a return trip where hopefully he'll take some of us up for some sunset photography.

And from a photo point of view. The sky was actually more blue than that picture shows. I actually de-saturated the blue a little to make it more believable.

After the Peoples Photography I found myself sliding into the blues as I reviewed my last year. Not because I felt I'd done badly, more that mentally I'd reset the clock and was starting out on another year of photography. The slate was clean so to speak. Mentally I'd decided that I was going to move on from last years pictures and treat this year as a brand new year, with brand new challenges. Essentially filing last years pictures in the done box.

I'd heard a photographer in England once describe how he destroyed all his photographs every year and how cathartic and refreshing he found the experience.

...

Well, bugger that.

After a week in the dumps, I remembered that they're my photographs and I can do what I want with them. So I looked through them again. It was a hell of a fun year for me to even get to the distance I managed.

Onwards and upwards I say. But now by building on the last year of photo!

...

Anyway, I took this at the weekend. It's had the saturation dropped a little to make it a bit more low key and moody.

I think it's a good example of how things have changed in a year for me. this old swing has been in this field for eons. I walked past it with the camera a few times last year and never saw the picture until the weekend. I'm not sure I did it justice, but it's a decent example of how my approach to a shot has evolved in a year.

(f/2.5, 1/1600sec, 50mm, ISO-200, 07/09/08)

 

I fought with this picture for an hour after making it HDR. I'm still not happy with the colours, but I thought I'd share and see if some kind soul (soul, church - geddit?) would help me out and suggest where it all went wrong.

I think I've entered a black and white phase. I was happy with the boat shot the other day and it lead me back to some of the other photographs I took during that trip to see if they worked in monochrome.

I'm still not decided on these, but I thought I'd share and see if anyone felt like commenting.

125

 

Old Row Boat

 

(Just in case it interests you, the Row Boat used to be much more blue. Most people seemed put off by the colours though, so I toned it back. I still like the blue version though...)

Ok, I'm sticking my neck out here and hoping for once I got something right.

Remember the HDR stuff from a day or two ago?

Well, I remembered one of the Chromasia tutorials talked about conversion to grayscale and it got me thinking...

If you'll excuse the pun, this picture floats my boat.

 

(The conversion here was performed using photoshops lab colour mode. the original plan to use the channel mixer worked well, but this seemed a little less contrasty and a little more light).

 

I'd put the process to convert this here, but you should really just check out Chromasia's tutorials as they're better than anything I could write.

Sometimes I just hold up the camera and click. I know it's bad. But, I enjoy it. I sometimes get nice pictures, I almost always get shouted at for taking too many pictures. Sometimes it's worth it.

This shot is the exception. I saw the fencing and considered how best to frame it. I thought out the line of posts and considered what I wanted the depth of field to do.

I quite like it.

I still got shouted at though.

(f/7.1, 1/50sec, 55mm, ISO-200, 13/07/08)

I'd mentioned revisiting the train tunnel that I used in the challenge (here) again.

One of the things I was never keen on in the original picture was the amount of dark space to the left. Adding to that, a few people suggested that putting the far end of the tunnel into focus might work better.

Well, I gave it a go...

 

(f/5.6, 1/125 sec,  24mm, ISO-200)

As well as a crop, I dropped the saturation in this a little and added a little sharpening and curves (because, well, you know...).

I like this. I like this a lot.

Please tell me I did a good thing.

I wanted to retake the image of Moira Station using a wider lens to see if I could improve on my first attempt at it. Without the constraints imposed on me at the time, I hoped I could make something more of the lines and the skies.

Well, Friday provided me with that opportunity (as well as the chance to revisit the tunnel), so I gave it a go.

(f/14, 1/25sec, 10mm, ISO-100, 04/07/2008, polariser used)

As well as some curves adjustments, I made a slight crop to remove my shadow.

 

I'm still not sure I like this more than the original.

"Light at the end of the tunnel"

Day 7 took slightly longer than planned. A few different things came up and to be honest I was keen to make the last shot of the challenge as good as possible.

I'm not sure what dragged me back to those railway bridges. Maybe it was a sense of there being more or maybe I wanted better light, but I'm glad I returned on a sunny day. (If only for the pun above).

What I wanted to achieve was the sense of distance and scale in the picture. I wasn't too sure what I wanted but was spending time holding the camera to my eye to try and see the shot. As it turned out, the AF actually focused on the bricks to the right and left the far trees and light out of focus without any real planning on my part. But, I liked the look in the viewfinder so took that as Day 7.

Hopefully it works.

(f7.1, 1/50sec, 25mm, ISO-100, 02/06/2008)

 

I'm still pulling together my thoughts on this challenge of Dermots. I'll try to sum them up in a future post.

"Messing about on the river"

OK, so there was no Day 5.

I was going to call today Day 5, after all I was away yesterday on business and I didn't have a huge amount of time for photography. But, I did manage to get a little time late last night and the result of my one shot challenge was abysmal. Let's not understate it, it was pretty woeful, even for me. It was blurred, out of focus and badly composed.

I was feeling pushed or time, so tried a shot of an ornament in the house. The object is quite nice, but I just didn't do the right things and I hurried it.

I guess if I was to learn anything about yesterdays shot, it would be that sometimes you have to accept it's not going to be worth the bother - if the shot isn't there, you're not going to get it.

 

Anyway, on with Day 6.

 

the weather's turned here and as a result the blue skies are grey and that miserable drippy rain is - well - miserable and drippy.

I tried to work around that a little and took a stroll down to a railway bridge close to home and shot this.

(F/14, 1/13sec, 18mm, ISO-200, 28/05/2008)

I tried to follow on from Dermot's comments the other day about lines heading into the distance, as well as give the horizon a bit more life than just the grey sky that was available. I also tried to get lower, both for perspective and to keep the tree I was hiding under out of the picture.

I feel the sky lets it down, and I'll go back here when it's a better day to see if it can be improved. A little more exposure might also help the dark areas under the tree in the right foreground.

Comments?

"Woo! Woo!"

In an effort to ensure I got a day 4 at all, I took my camera to work today. It's a habit I've been trying to develop as much as possible as there are always photo possibilities when you don't have it.

To be honest, I'd almost given up on a shot for today by home time. Work seemed to have this expectation of me working, so the camera stayed in it's case and I stayed firmly up to my eyes. But then, on the way home I remembered a shot I'd wanted to take for a while and thought it might just be OK.

(f16, 1/125sec, 18mm, ISO-200, 26/05/08)

 

If I'd to do this again outside the realms of this challenge, I'd use a polariser and maybe come earlier in the morning - by my reckoning the sun rises at the end of the tracks or thereabouts.

I like the effect of the platform receeding into the distance, though it's marred a little by the leaning buildings and it could also have been more central. I also tried to get low to take this - sometimes I forget I'm quite tall and that can throw perspective out.

Comments?

 

Oh, and fair warning. Day 5 may not be tomorrow- I have business in Dublin and I'm unlikely to be back with time for camera fun.

Another HDR shot from a week or so ago.

Nothing major to say about this, except that trying to keep orange life rings from glowing when making an HDR image is a pain in the...

While retracing my steps on the beach that night, I came across this.

(F/8, 3.2sec, 22mm, ISO-100, 03/05/08)

 

Now, only one of those sets belonged to me. So, who exactly followed me out?

(Yes Dermot, I know it's very dark - I like dark!)

The settings quoted above are a little misleading. I did a reasonable amount of photoshoping on this, specifically I used sharpen masks and some curve changes to push intensify the colours. Interestingly, I was playing with the application mode for the layers - I'd tended to leave it on normal in the past.This picture makes use of the multiply mode, merging two duplicate layers and (I guess) multiplying the colours together for a result. The "soft light" option also seemed interesting, but I decided I preferred this more sinister version. A heavy crop to change the image from landscape to portrait finished it off and got rid of the empty spaces down each flank.

I'd kind of stopped post processing outside of Lightroom and forays into HDRville over the last few weeks, but I picked up some fantastic tutorials on photoshop today and they've got me all inspired again. I'll post some details about them later.

Long exposures can give some interesting and completely unexpected results.

On Saturday night I was on one of the beaches in Cloughglass and to be honest should probably have packed up and gone home instead of trying to take one more picture (final image count for the weekend was 290 pictures by the way).

By the time I took the following, it was well into dark and the nice red twilight was pretty much gone. In an effort to get some light into the camera, a 5 second shutter speed was required. The side effect of this was that the waves and the boat have a nice ethereal blur about them.

At least, I think so.

 

(f/14, 5secs, 22mm, ISO-100, 03/05/2008)

 

To my mind it gets even nicer when you see the resultant HDR - Yes I had auto exposure bracketing on and couldn't help myself.

Oh, it's been cropped a little as the horizon wasn't in a great spot in the original.

I like the intensity of the colours more here. Yeah it's probably lost some of its natural hues, but the sky and the colours just seem more.... well more.

I tried a third version of this. Just because I was messing and could.

This time I used the overexposed image in the exposure bracket and let the HDR software work from there. Just using a single image.

I'm not keen on the burned out white in the sky and if I didn't have 300 images to play with I might spend a little time trying to clean it up. but I really do like the sand and the boat motion so thought I would share.

Just along the coast from The Giants Causeway is the Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. Originally built by fishermen to allow them to check their Salmon nets, these days it's a good walk and 5 minutes of terror.

To be fair, it's probably less likely to collapse than any of the millennium foot bridges that do that horrible bouncy thing when people walk on them. That said, when you're in the middle of it, you tend to forget the giant steel pins and metal cables holding it in place.

And as it bounces, I dare you not to hum the Indiana Jones theme music.

(F5.6. 1/200, 55mm ISO-100, 12/04/08)

(Yes - another of those shutter speed shots....)

By the time I got taking this picture I'd once again fallen foul of dirt in the camera. This time, it was on the mirror rather than the lens. A good blast with the Rocket Air Blower sorted it out when I got home. I've been trying to work out a better way to change lenses. One which doesn't involve carrying a sterile tent. So far, best I can come up with is:

• Change lenses somewhere sheltered (no wind or rain or sea spray)
• Change them efficiently (not quickly - you risk dropping them, but don't stand chatting as you do it)
• Have the right lens caps to hand for the job (remember Canon cameras take both EF and EF-S lenses, one size might not fit all)
• Try to hold the body pointing down (dirt tends not to fall up)
• Accept that it's part of life and will happen sooner or later.

Failing that, you could always carry two or more bodies. I mean, if Canon are reading and want me to try that option all they have to do is ask..... Hello?....Hello, anybody there?

Ah well, worth a try.

...Golfers have caddies

If you've been to The Giants Causeway, then you'll know that it's a fair old hike down from the visitors centre to the causeway itself. More importantly, it's a fair old hike back UP again.

Intrepid explorers that we were, we walked it rather than take the little flexi-bus thing they have.

Muppet that I was, I took my tripod.

I'm currently using a Slingshot 100AW bag and I do really like it, but it's a little small and doesn't have any way of securing a tripod. As a result I had to carry the thing in one hand the entire way round the causeway. MY rationale for taking it was that I was taking landscape shots and might try some HDR stuff. The reality was that it was so bright shutter speeds were never an issue and I've no idea how to HDR an ocean...

So if you're out and about, think long and hard about the kit you take. Or bring a caddie and let them struggle with the extra gear....

(F/5.6, 1/200sec, 10mm, ISO-100, 12/04/08)

For Dermot, I'm sure it felt like a week of travel to get from Dublin to the North Coast via the vagaries of Irish Rail and my driving. It's kind of apt that it's taken me as long to get around to posting a picture of the place.

Anyway,

The Giants Causeway.

(F/14, 1/20sec, 22mm, ISO-100, 12/04/08, Polarising Filter Used)

The Giants Causeway, possibly the biggest attraction in Northern Ireland and one of a number of features of the North Coast worth taking a day to visit. Formed from Volcanic Rock undergoing rapid cooling  or by Finn MacCool because he wanted to pick a fight with his neighbour in Scotland.

I prefer the second explanation.

This was the first time I encountered 'tourists' while taking pictures. During outings to Belfast and Dublin, there had never been a time when I was competing with strangers for access to and shots of something. On the Causeway, things changed.

I guess all you can do is be patient and hope people move in such a way the shot is possible. The above shot is one of a series I took of the end of the causeway as it stretches into the sea. To take it, Dermot and I sat on a couple of the columns for maybe 10 minutes waiting on two teenage girls and some American lad moving- or at least for the American lad to make his move.

I was going to rant about the youth of today and the fact they stood on a Unesco World Heritage site and rather than be astounded, they flirted. Then I remembered when I was young.

I don't know if he got the girl, but I kind of hope he did.

Situated in the Glens of Antrim, Carnlough is a fishing village on the Causeway Coast Road.

(1/160sec, f/10, 55mm, ISO-100, 12/04/08)

 

Not a lot to say about this photo. I quite liked it.

As villages go, this place has a lot of potential for a photographer, meeting all the criteria for "Irish" scenery. It's somewhere that I'd very much like to spend a day shooting in and around and I reckon if we hadn't of been on a mission that might have been what we ended up doing.

Interestingly, Dermot posted a very similar picture a few days ago, you can find it here. not sure which picture I like more. If I was pushed I'd say Dermot's composition is better than mine, but I think I prefer my colours .

I'd been saying to Dermot for ages about coming up north for a day so I could return the favour from those times when he took me out round Dublin. Well, since he's gone and got a job in Holland, the some time quickly became a time and that time was yesterday.

We met around 10 in Belfast and headed off in search of the Antrim Coast Road and the Giants Causeway. Being a native of the North, I off course knew exactly where the coast road was - beside the sea, somewhere to the right of the country. I'm not sure I impressed Dermot with my geographical ability, but trusty steed and I found it eventually while I regaled my Dublin friend with tales and folklore about the land we passed through.

Tales like...

"These houses are really expensive!"

"That's our power station" (I may have got the name wrong though...)

"This is Carrickfergus, it has a castle. Look that old building, that must be it"

"The Causeway coast is most of the best coastal roads in the world" - I may have made this up. But I was sure I heard this on TV somewhere....

And so continued a day to the North. A day that promised rain and wind, but brought only sun and warmth. I'll start posting photographs over the next while. But for now...

 

A typical view from just off the Causeway Coastal Route.

(F20, 1/30sec, 10mm, ISO-100, HDR - +1/-1ev*) - Some levels adjustments.

 

 

Hopefully Dermot enjoyed the day. I know I enjoyed it right up until 10 minutes after he left for Dublin when my attempt to get a burger was rudely interrupted by someone driving into the car while I was parked. They didn't even have the decency to hit the same side as my neighbour a few weeks earlier. My mechanic is going to love me...

 

 

 

* I've added a little bit more information to my usual image settings line. The HDR numbers here refer to the exposure differences used to create the HDR base for the finished image - typically the camera seems to change the shutter speed, but that may be just because I'm shooting in Aperture mode.

I just recieved an interesting post from Stuart. He took the image of the posts in the water and changed the crop in it to remove the quay/pier thing, but at the same time he adjusted the aspect ratio.

Here, let me show you....





and the new cut




As he points out, he's moved the horizon to the lower third of the picture, rather than the middle. This gives more emphasis to the sky. The width of the picture also gives it a more 'landscape' feel - you know wide open spaces etc. His post has reminded me that I need to be a bit more planned in composition. I have a tendancy to always put the horizon about halfway, but that's not always the best is it?

From what I've been picking up, there are probably a few rules I should try to apply more often in landscape shots.

1. Always have something to give interest, draw your eye in and give a sense of scale.

2. Make use of the rule of thirds in the composition, placing things a third of the way horizontally and vertically in the picture will give it a sense of proportion and balance

3. Give your eye something to follow - a line of rocks, a path  - leading you into the picture

4. Consider what you're presenting in the image. If it's the sky, it probably needs the majority of the picture


I'm sure there are other rules or tricks. I know someone mentioned trying to include a bit of red...


In terms of cropping, I've always used roughly the aspect ratio of the camera for shots I've posted. Stuart has different opinions (as can be seen here in some examples). I'll have to try this out a little more myself.

Another of the shots from Donegal over Easter. This time, taken at a fly fishing pier close to Burtonport. The weather spent the entire weekend trying to annoy me.

Yes, it was a personal vendetta.

 

(1/25, F/20, 10mm, ISO-100, 22/03/2008)

 

This image has had some tonal mapping, similar to the previous couple of posts. Mostly just to give the water and the sky a bit more life. Interestingly, it's not composed from multiple images like the HDR posts, instead just using one exposure as the basis.

I like the eerie quality to it, though I'm not sure about the corner of the quay in the bottom left of the picture.

Oh, I've also decided to increase image sizes a little on the blog. Typically I used 300*200 for thumbnails and 800*533 for the proper upscale. I've changed it to something like 400*267 and 900*600 respectively. The odd numbers for height are down to the aspect ratio of the raw picture.