Potpourri!

I was messing on Friday night and took this while checking lenses for dust/dirt/little green men.

It quite struck me with it's uniformity. I wish I could say it was planned.




And for the record. Andrew suggested I call this post "Photopourri". I told him I thought that stunk...

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.

I spent the bank holiday weekend in Donegal basking in some unexpected, but very welcome, blue skies and soaring temperatures.

I was also lucky enough to get out a couple of times with my camera. the photos are currently uploading, and I'll get onto that subject in a moment, but for now... Some Seaweed.

 

(f8, 1/100sec, 181mm, ISO-100, 04/05/2008)

Yeah, it's not great (are they ever?), but I liked the liquid effect on it.

 

Anyway, onto more important matters. I remember a time when I made mention of taking 100 photos over a weekend. Well, this weekend I arrived home with not one, but 3 and a half full memory cards. That's 7Gig of photo insanity. This leaves me with a couple of important things to consider.

1. Do I buy more/bigger cards? I'd really rather not run out.

2. Am I being too proliferate* with camera? Taking too many pictures, or too many pictures of the same thing?

3. do I need to start deleting on the camera before uploading?

Any thoughts?

 

 

*I do not think this means what I think it means, but I think you know what I mean...

It seems like it was only last week we were getting violent storms, snow flurries and frost. Then suddenly there was enough sun to send me to my garden for the day. More amazingly, there was enough sun to actually burn the back of my neck while I put up a fence! (Yep, that's right. Not only do I attempt to take photographs, I also attempt DIY). Maybe I'll combine things and take a photo of my fence one day...

In amongst my DIY madness, I encountered a couple of interesting flowers at my Dads house. As usual, I'm not as happy with these photos as I'd like. Annoyingly I think it's going to be a theme with flowers and the summer.

(F/5.6, 1/320sec, 200mm, ISO-100, 27/04/08)

 

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with my attempts at Macro photography. I think there are a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, the lens I'm using, a Tamron 55-200 Macro that I got as part of the camera kit. Now don't get me wrong, it's a nice little lens for £70 or so. I just don't think it's as sharp or macro-esque as a dedicated lens.

Secondly, that 484rc2 ball head I bought recently. (The one I talked about here). There seems to be a little drift in it as you lock the head in place. You spend time getting the centre of your image dead centre in the view finder, you twist the lock bolt and it all slides ever so slightly out. Again, I know from various reviews and how-to's that I've read that say a ball head is not great for Macro photography.. But I'm hardly trying to photograph the head of a fly here!

Anyone any advice?

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 .