Daily Blog

This was taken last week on one of those rare days when the air was so clear and still that visibility stretched for miles, and the water on clew bay so calm that it looks more like a lake then the sea.

I passed Rockfleet Castle a couple of days ago and was delighted to see the scaffolding that has encased the castle for the last 12 months has been removed. I was disappointed though to find it is still closed to the public for health and safety reasons.

I passed Rockfleet Castle a couple of days ago and was delighted to see the scaffolding that has encased the castle for the last 12 months has been removed. I was disappointed though to find it is still closed to the public for health and safety reasons.

Just back from the Cinema with Patricia, saw Calvery, really good. The only down side was the picture started around sunset time!! This picture was taken on the journey to the cinema, on the N5 outside Ballyvarry.

A pleasant but cloudy day in Mayo today. I had hoped to get a sunset this evening but the clouds have moved in and the sun is hidden. I did get this one last night however over Bellacragher Bay.

Another lovely spring day in Mayo. I was driving between Achill and Mulranny today and decided to take a detour in the village of Curaun and found this old farmhouse with a wonderful view across to Clare Island.

It feels like I am really taking a break, this is the second night in a row that I have I have not supplied the image for the blog. This is another from yesterday evenings Landscape workshop in Mulranny. And I appear in the image! This one was made by Sinead Egan, who has come on a number of my courses and is an advanced photographer. I am rarely caught on this side of the camera and very rarely do I like pictures of myself, but I loved this one. Thanks Sinead!

Had a great evening this evening, I took a small group on a photo trip in Mulranny. the group were made up of photographers of different abilities from beginners through to advanced. Maeve , who was of the participants was a complete beginner took this picture . I was so impressed I asked if I could use it for the blog.
So tonights "Image of Mayo" is by Maeve Foran. Thanks Maeve.

I am back in Mulranny for a couple of days. I had two one to one photography classes today, one was with somebody who is making the switch from film to digital and this evening I met with a photographer who is struggling a little with off camera flash. In between those two lessons I got out for the sunset. In truth I did not see it,due to low cloud cover , but about ten minutes after sunset there was a three or four minute display of colour.

I am posting a little early today. I am on my way to Galway to take my Apple computer to the Apple hospital!! It has not been very well now for several weeks and I am afraid one of these days it will crash permanently. It does feel a little like I am taking a friend to the hospital though, don't know what I will do without it for the few days!!

This is an image of Croagh Patrick .

Because I have been away for a few days, today was spent at home catching up on printing and preparing images for the post and delivery . But I made a happy discovery today when I found the original of this image, it has always been very popular as a card, but the card cannot be printed large as the quality would diminish. but today I stumbled upon the original, a spelling mistake in the folder name had hidden it from me and from the search function on the computer! I am always quick to blame the "silly" computer but I suppose it was silly me who typed the spelling error!!! Anyway I was glad to find it. The picture was taken with a Nikon D80 back in 2007 !

Today was my third day mentoring fellow photographer Tom, and we had planned to photograph the sunrise . But we were greeted at 6am with a blanket of rain , so we had a cup of tea and decided not to go out taking pictures, but instead, we started our photoshop/ lightroom session early. the weather did clear around 11am, and even though it is not the best time of the day for landscape photography we went down to the beach in Mulranny and it was just beautiful. Mayo may not get a lot of sunshine but when it does.......

Continuing the one to one tuition in Mulranny, Tom and myself got up early this morning to shoot the sunrise. But there was no sign of the sun. We arrived at our location half an hour before sunrise and waited for half an hour after, but the cloud cover was so thick that we did not see the sun. the nearest we got was when there was a small break which allowed a small amount of light to break through. A long shutter speed shows movement in the cloud, and even though we did not get the sunrise we both came away with pictures we were pleased with.

I am in Mulranny for a couple of days. I am here with fellow photographer ,Tom. This evening the weather closed in on us and there was drizzly rain and no light at all. we decided to take a trip out anyway and drove across Mulranny golf Course to get to the beach. There were sheep and lambs every where , but a number of lambs had congregated and were taking shelter against a big role of artificial grass!!. I have no idea why there would be a role of artificial grass on a golf course but there it was. We almost drove past them before we saw them but on seeing them we reversed the car back so as not to frighten them and went to the boot to get our cameras out, set our cameras to the correct settings and then drove back up to them very slowly and took some pictures from inside the car. The really cloudy overcast sky was ideal light for portraiture and the black background of the grass role made for ideal conditions for lamb portraiture!

Very late posting this evening . I have spent the evening at the Mayo Photographic club in castle bar. The earlier part of the evening was the last of my "improvers" class for club members, during which we did some work with photoshop elements. Then the full club met and I was giving a night on critiquing photographs. a number of members were kind enough to send me their images in advance of the night for me to critique. it is of course easy to critique, though some of the work was so good that it was actually difficult to suggest any improvements. But anyway I had the bright idea to actually implement any of the improvements I was suggesting, So as you can imagine it took several hours to prepare, but the night seemed to go well.

This is Ballylahan castle between Kiltimagh and Foxford

Its a beautiful evening here in Mayo, I have not got out with my camera today, but even as I write this I can hear children playing in the street, its like a summer evening!! This image of Lough Cullan was made two weeks ago, just as winter tried to extend it's run!

I had to go to Galway today , and did not expect to get time for photography. But I did manage to steal five minutes in Claregalway Abbey on the way home!

This image was made about four years ago on the shores Clew Bay. When I was teaching "Lightroom" in the camera club the other evening, I was deliberately using older images and I had used this one to demonstrate how to pull detail out of the shadow areas of images. I was pleased with how it turned out myself so thought the image deserved a wider audience!!!

Life is not always full of colour! Yesterday morning we woke to heavy fog. I took a visit to Urlaur Abbey shortly after sunrise!!

Yesterday evening I was teaching an improvers photography class at the Mayo Photographic Club, after the class I had to leave in a hurry as I had to be in Claremorris before 9pm. as I drove away from Castlebar there was a lovely sunset just beginning to develop over Lough Lannagh but I just had to leave it behind. As I drove towards Claremorris I could see the lovely colours in my rear view mirror and in truth I was tormented by them!! ( or at least by the fact that I had to leave them behind me!) Then I spotted this row of trees in the distance and knew they would make the perfect contrast with the now fading colours. So I pulled in, put an 80_200mm lens on cranked it out to 200 and fired off a couple of shots. it probably took less then a minute, but it made the rest of the journey easier!!