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 .

During the trip up north I noticed Dermot was making a lot of use of his macro lens. I mean, I took him to see some of the best coast line in the island and he stands on a beach with a macro lens taking photos of rocks!

He did get me thinking though. Maybe there is something to looking at the little things, even when the big thing is so pretty.

Now, I've tried ad-hoc Macro stuff out and about before. Never with much success. The only macro lens I own is also my telephoto lens and at 200mm it's probably not the best option out there for this sort of thing. Certainly, every freehand shot I'd ever tried didn't work up until now.

While shooting in Carnlough, I noticed one of the old trailers had a lot of rust and some odd paint splashes so I decided to give a real close up on this stuff one more go. but this time I tried something a little different.

Instead of sticking to my trusty aperture priority, I switched to shutter priority and set it to 1/200. A lot of the books and websites I'd read talk about reciprocal values for focal length and shutter speed and use mumbo jumbo, but in English I figure it means...

 

To avoid shake, your shutter speed needs to be at least 1 over the focal length of the lens.

50mm needs at least 1/50

200mm needs at least 1/200

etc.

Yeah, I guess you all knew that. (And you probably all know what reciprocal means as well). I'm slightly embarrassed it took so long for me to realise an answer to my shaky hand syndrome was to change modes on the camera.

Anyway, on with the rust.

(1/200sec, F/5, 181mm, ISO-100, 12/04/08)

A friend passed me the link to an interesting article on the bbc news website discussing photographers rights.

For as long as I've been trying to learn photography I've been encountering stories about people being stopped, searched, bullied and even arrested for taking photographs. Now, I'm long enough in the tooth to know that "just because it's on the web doesn't mean it's true" but there's so many of these stories it does seem to be a real issue.

Fortunately I've never been stopped, but I would like a solid bullet point list of my rights just in case.

The best I've came up with so far is this article and this one.

It's hardly legal advice, but I would suggest you take down peoples/police officers names as well as the date and time of the incident. Also, think long and hard before you hand over your gear or delete pictures - someone forcing you to do this can be construed as harassment or criminal damage. Remember though, sometimes it's better to smile, comply and walk away.... Then slag them off in your blog.

 

Oh, and just to be sure to be sure. None of the information posted here should be regarded as legal advice. If you require legal advice, I would advise you to speak to a solicitor or other official legal representative.

I've done some playing around with HDR over the past few months, but if you want to see it done well, try looking at "Stuck in Customs" a photoblog by Trey Ratcliff.

Some of the pictures border on obscene they are so beautiful.

There is also a nice tutorial on HDR that's worth a read.

What is it about old boats and stories?

With my wife coming from a fishing village I've got used to seeing old boats around the headlands and in the bays. All beached, left to rust or rot. Unlike old cars, they still offer a sense of romance or purpose - even if only to remind us of different times.

I saw the "Spinning Wheel" and wondered about it. Especially at the colours and grain of the old wood.

(f/8, 1/125sec, 46mm, ISO-100, WB- Cloudy)

 

Maybe she'll sail again.

I thought it was about time to mention a couple of other photoblogs I visit quite a lot.

Both are local (Belfast) based part time photographers with oodles more experience than me.

Darrell's blog, WingedMonkey, has a lot of different shots on it, ranging from extreme macro to landscape. It's well worth checking out.

Andrews blog, NothingToBeSaid, concentrates on people and uses mostly black and whit. He also uses some strange sort of camera that takes 'film' memory cards...

 

Check them out!

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.

This is the second shot of the rifle from the local gun club.

It only struck me when reviewing the images that I never actually took a shot with the entire gun in focus. There was no reason not to. It simply never crossed my mind. I've all manner of macro shots of the trigger, the stock, the barrel and lots of these shallow depth of field shots, but no single rifle shot.

I mentioned this to the owner of the gun and he just laughed. Apparently the single most common picture taken in those circles is of the entire rifle in focus and side on, so he's happy enough that I approached it from a different angle.

Still, the shot might have been nice...

I guess if you're going to shoot pictures of something you should take the obvious shots as well as the less obvious ones. You might regret it later...

 

(F/4, 1/2 sec, 50mm, ISO - 100, 31/03/2008)

Sorry it’s been so quiet lately. A few different things had cropped up and… well, you know how it is.

I’m always keen to try different types of photography and over the last few months have been lucky enough to try a lot of different things (portraits, street shots, landscapes, night photography, HDR, the list goes on). A lot of the opportunities have come about by talking with people about their hobbies, telling them about mine and generally trying to be a good bloke. It’s always worth asking friends with interesting hobbies if you can tag along, you might get a great photo or even a great new hobby too.

 

A few weeks back, I was lucky enough to be invited by a work friend to a local rifle club to take some pictures. It was an excellent experience and I’ll share some of those pictures here over the next few days. In the meantime, he has my thanks!

This is a cropped close up of the barrel of a rifle – I don’t have the details of the weapon to hand – they’re not really important in this context.

It’s a good example of the ‘beauty in the eye’ type thing. I like the shot for the shallow depth of field, the reflections and the little marks showing the gun has had some use. The friend who owns the gun immediately commented on the hexagonal pattern around the barrel. Where I saw a nice image, he saw abrasions proving the rifling is pretty accurate apart from maybe a small throw to one side.

(Oh, for those of you scanning my images for signs of sensor dirt – keep it up! But you’re wasting your time here (I hope!), this image would have had the dirty marks cropped out).

OK, so it’s been quiet all week after the flurry of photos from Easter. The plain and simple reason for this is that I spent several hours on Sunday trying to clean my camera.

Darrell noticed these odd spots in a photograph I’d published last week and correctly identified them as sensor dirt.



This sent me into a whole self loathing spiral.
I mean, I’m a good boy. I don’t fool around with other cameras, I don’t go into those sorts of shops, I always use protection and try to avoid exposing my sensitive bits in public…

But still, I’d picked something up.

Seems at some point when I’d been changing lenses a bit of pollutant had managed to sneak into the camera and that it was pretty well stuck as the sensor cleaning (some electro-static charge thing on my camera) wasn’t shifting it.

I asked Darrell some further questions about the issue and he pointed me here as well as providing me some good advice. It seems I could either clean it myself or pay someone to do it professionally.

Well, that sent me off to my local chain camera store to look for solutions. Whilst I’d prefer to have it done properly, the thought that it was something I could learn made me give it a go (that and I’m cheap. Hey! Nobody is sponsoring my camera madness and the amount I’ve spent recently…).

Firstly I purchased a Rocket Air Blower and tried that. The trick with using one of these is to set the sensor to manual clean then hold the camera upside down and blast air into the sensor area. This seemed to life a few little flecks which were sitting in the mount area – I’m guessing these had been kept of the lens by the electro-static sensor clean. But the artefacts on the lens lived on…

So, I resorted to a lens cleaning pen.

Now most photographers I spoke with went a bit green at this stage, you’ve been warned.

Basically you rub the lens pen around the sensor, making sure to get all the corners. Don’t rub too firmly, but at the same time make sure it’s not like getting touched by a rainbow. It’s best to make sure the camera is upside down to encourage the dirt to fall out.  Yep, that bit they say don't touch...

Well, it took a few attempts, but suffice to say I think I got the most of it. Do me a favour. If you disagree, don’t tell me!*

So, today’s lesson. To clean a camera.
1.    Hold or mount the camera upside down
2.    Set the camera to manual cleaning mode
3.    Realise the batteries are nearly flat and the camera will close the mirror before shutting down, so change the batteries and start again
4.    Try using an air blower first
5.    Try using a sensor pen, but be gentle!

Or

1.    Pay someone who knows what they're doing

I found the best way to test if the lens was clean was to take photographs of the white tiles in the bathroom. By looking closely I was able to track the marks and see when they were removed. Best bet is to set the camera to focus at infinity and make sure the picture is over exposed. A good uniform colour is what you need.

I’m almost frightened to post in case it’s not fixed. I'll post over the weekend and we can have a debate.

*Actually do tell me. Please.