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.

Last shot of the Causeway Coast not to feature the Causeway....

 

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

 

This was another of those shots to prove out my new approach to hand held macro photography, making use of shutter priority and forcing it to work at 1/200sec.

There were two versions of this, one with White Balance set to auto and one (this one) with it set to shade. The shade setting makes the colours much more warm in this case and I felt it was the better of the two. I'm not normally  a white balance fiddler when out and about, but this time it seemed to fit (and besides Dermot was doing it).

I think in this case it falls down over the depth of focus. At the 200mm end, F/5.6 seems way too shallow and the blown up picture actually hurts my eyes a little. I've tried re-cropping it to see if it works better, but to no avail. I guess next time I need to consider dinking with the ISO as well if the F-stop is so wide.

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.