I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. There are lots of good reasons to be in a photography club.

Possibly one of the best is the chance to get places you might not otherwise have access to.

Yesterday we headed to Killyleagh Regatta in Strangford Lough. The club organised a boat with a local pilot (no idea why they’re called pilots, but they’re called pilots) who knew the race really well. He was able to put us into the middle of the action over and over again, knowing exactly where we should be and when it was time to get out of the way.

Something well worth experiencing, and a great day out with camera folks of a like mind.

The weather was a little sucky, but, well…

Rumours I took over 750 photographs are exaggerated…. a little.

I may never finish sorting through them

One of a number of random shots as I get used to a rather nice 24-105 lens.

Last weekend we went to the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh.

It being the 4th July, the crowds were mad. I took a few shots, but the weather and the crowds didn’t really help.

Or

Time for Neurofen…

I can’t see this photo ever winning prizes of making huge impacts in my photography world. There are probably a million stupid things wrong (and some pretty major ones). I’ll even accept it’s been heavily post processed, and that’s not everyones cup of tea.

But, I liked it.

I like the clock and I like the old carriage and I like the colour casts on it now. And it’s a piece of Paul candy – I’ll enjoy looking at it for a while.

In terms of creation, the original image was a little flat and dull. I borrowed heavily from a Lightroom preset I downloaded from Really Japan before making some changes to increase some local detail.

The camera club organised an outing today to Down Railway and Inch Abbey.

If ever there was a good reason to join a camera club, it’s this sort of event. We were given access to the building yard, switching rooms and all sorts of other behind the scenes event. The staff were great and took their time to tell us what was going on as well as being happy to pose for photos.

It being fathers day, it was also a great way to spend a Sunday with the family.

Course, my slightly lobster colouring tonight may make me reconsider things in the morning…

I was lucky enough to borrow that 70-200 F4L again.

Pretty, pretty, lens

I had two experiences of people using my pictures this week. One good and one bad.

The good one was exceptionally good. I received an email from Randy Wakeman, a keen game shooter and editor of several US magazines on the subject of guns and shooting. He enquired about a photo on my site and asked to use it on his own blog. It’s lovely to get requests like this and needless to say I was delighted to help out. You can see the photo here. My knowledge of shotguns is pretty limited, but I’m told the article is very informative too!

The bad experience? Well, I have google alerts watching for hits and links on my blog. I was alarmed to see a link site using my pictures to drive traffic. Googling tells me that they grab images from sites and then use tactics to push themselves up the image results list. People see the image and click the link which takes them to a site covered in ads and not my blog. They use a hotlink to my image so I can’t even say they stole it. I’m planning a quiet chat with the friend who deals with my hosting to see if there is something I can do. Seriously, this is a low traffic blog and there are a lot of better pictures out there. How desperate are they to rip off me?

As well as an opportunity to photograph miniatures, Gleno also has a really nice waterfall hidden away.

On Friday night I took a series of pictures using long exposures to try and capture the waterfall. Whilst I love the effect, this introduced a new dimension for me – dealing with a breeze.

Ideally, I wanted the water to have that lovely motion feel but the rest of the scene to be still. It’s not obvious in the shot above, (maybe more so on the jump), but when you look at the leaves top left they just aren’t that sharp.

During session, I took about 20 photographs. I’m still working through them to see if there are better leaf sets or if I need to rethink the approach and maybe take a shot at high shutter speed and then one with a slower speed to blend together for a best of both worlds solution.

I’d expect I’ll post a few more waterfall shots soon enough.

OK, it hardly counts as wildlife photography when the birds in question are tethered and used for falconry.

But still, its a great way to get some exposure to some fantastic birds.

First shot is pretty much as taken. The second had a bit of HDR applied.