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.

Yesterdays picture caused a bit of discussion over breakfast with some friends.

It all centred around when is a photograph no longer a photograph. Now, this is something I’ve spoken about here and I’m still pretty undecided myself. My current thinking is, it’s a photograph for as long as the photographer wants to call it one. There may be a better definition of it out there.

The question arose if the HDR was better than the original, or if its artificial adjustments made it something different but that it lost the appeal of the original.

I thought it might be interesting to share the three original images and let people make their own mind up. These are as imported from the camera.

I might come back to this at some point myself and see if I can produce something I like more using only one of these images.

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.

I feel I should confess my problem.

No. Not that I can’t take photographs – you know this already.

I feel I should confess my love for cheese.

Not the yellow, made from milk, type cheese, but the big hair retro “Disco Stu” cheese.

Which is why, even though this should have been consigned to the recycle bin as a drunken mistake, I decided to let you all see it.

I can’t help but feel it should be stitched or stencilled onto a T-Shirt or the back of a motorcycle jacket and sent back in time to the 1980’s.

I really need to try harder to manage my depth of field issues.

This is just a little shallow for me. Though I love the effect pushing it through an HDR process has had on it.

Original image was parsed through Dynamic-Photo HDR then had some small curves adjustments and a little sharpening applied to it.

The original image was shot at f/5.6 1/250 at 250mm. The wide aperture at such a zoom has left it a little too shallow. On review, it’s an issue I have with a few birds of prey pictures I took over the weekend.

How do you eat your jelly babies?

Probably nothing too amazing about this picture, though I do like the colours. What’s more important for me is that I asked the person who had the sweet stall if I could take some pictures of their wares.

I’ve read lots of guides about talking to people when shooting in a market or fair and they all say people tend to be very friendly and willing to share or to let you take pictures. I’ve tried it before and it’s something I still find uncomfortable doing.

But if I can get pictures like this as a result I may well try to do it more often.

And, also, jelly babies? I eat them by the handful!

Is anyone interested in a bit of a photo game?

The idea is that each month everyone who wants to play submits a single image based on a theme. Everyone who submits an image is then allowed one vote (you can’t vote for your own image). Image with the most votes wins. You must take the image during the month (we’ll work an honour system).

The only prize is bragging rights and the privilege of choosing the next theme.

The idea is basically what’s happening on www.fujimugs.com but I’m guessing we’ll have a much smaller entry!

Why should you play? Well, it’s a good excuse to get your camera out and shooting to a theme is often good fun.

Oh, and if you win and you’re up for it, I’d love you to write an entry for this blog (or your own) telling me how you took the image and what you did to present it.

I know a few people have already said they’re interested, so we’ll kick it off at the start of June.

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

If you don’t mind, I’m going to take a little side step in this post and instead of waffling about my camera or my photographs, I’m going to talk about my mobile phone.

Or at least my new camera.

Or phone.

Or, well…

OK. I know camera phones have been around for ages, but I’ve always found them to be blurry awful things with more shutter lag than a thing with a lot of shutter lag. (Frankly when I heard stories of people using them to peep on people getting changed, it always amazed me – any phone I had in the time it took you to peep and take the picture, the person could have been washed, dressed and halfway to the pub.)

But, since it was contract renewal time and I didn’t want an iPhone or Google thing I took a look at the Sony Ericsson C905.

I’m not going to talk about the phone. It takes calls, makes calls and does those text message things. So that’s all good.

But some genius built a Sony Cyber-shot into it. Yup, a genuine Sony Cyber-shot 8 megapixel camera. That’s 8 megapixels, a decent lens, a flash, a video camera and a bundle of love like face detection, macro mode and shiny shiny goodness.

It even takes a nice picture…

If you want technical specs, you can get them here.

If you’re in the market for a phone and a camera, then this seems like the business.