Daily Blog

I thought this evening I would post a "behind the scenes" picture which might prove helpful to some of you. In the last couple of days I posted some flower pictures, they were both taken on sunny days which can create its own difficulties in holding detail in the flower, particularly the white orchid. The umbrella you can see is a shoot through umbrella normally used in the studio in front of a flash. But it does a great job of creating nice even light for the flower portrait also!! Cost about €20 and it folds up and is easy to carry. Although the umbrella is not actually set up for the picture you can see the white orchid I posted yesterday in the picture. The grey triangular shaped thingy is a grey card which is used to set white balance, that way you can get accurate colours of the flower,and can also be used to set the exposure. if you photograph the scene with the grey card in it , when you open the picture in photoshop or lightroom simply clicking on the grey with the eyedropper will set the correct white balance.

Spent the day recovering from aftermath of yesterdays running around in the heat. Suffered numerous cramps throughout the night, obviously I did not hydrate enough before the race. Anyway i am feeling much better now.

Here is another picture from Co Clare. This is an "O Kelly Orchid" It is a lovely white orchid, common in the Burren . It is named after Bernard O Kelly who was a collector of Burren flowers and had a business supplying them to collectors around the world back in the late 1800s A practice that would be illegal now.

Here is another image from yesterdays trip to Co Clare. Today I was a participant in a local "adventure race" here in Kiltimagh, which involved a 10K race over the local mountain which included running across the bog which is energy sapping to say the least, followed by 23 kilometers cycling over the same mountain then another 7K run including a few hundred meteres through the Glor River (Hence the race is called the "Race to Glory") It took me a respectable 2hours and 36minutes, a few minutes faster then last year so i was happy enough. I had hoped to run it a little faster and so decided to leave Co Clare early yesterday evening, to get an early night to be well rested for the race. So I left early but got distracted ( I am easily distracted) at Gleninagh and went down to the castle and then to the shore, where I took this picture, I eventually got home at 12.45am!!!! so much for the early night.

I am very late posting this evening.I was in Fanore Co Clare for the day with Patricia, we walked one of the green roads on the lookout for a Bee Orchid, we met some other travelers on the road who told use we had walked right past them and proceeded to bring us back to the spot. Sure enough we had passed a lovely group of four Bee Orchids. Bee Orchids are fairly rare, I have only seen them on three occasions in 30 years, so it was a privilege to see them again today, unfortunately they were passed their best, hastened by the scorching sun of the last few of days, so i will not post a bee orchid, there were plenty of other wild flowers to photograph though including these bloody cranesbills which are one of my favourites.

The hazy sunshine continues. I went out this morning to Lough Carra fairly early,expecting there to be some mist over the lack, but if there was any, I had arrived too late and the light was already quite harsh. Still it was not a completely wasted journey....

Another lovely day in Mayo, ay this rate the bogs might even dry out!! I went down to our local bog this evening and was surprised at just how dry it was, areas that i would not normally be able to walk on are now quite firm underfoot, and the bog cotton is like a carpet all across the bog. there was a lovely breeze this evening, but it made it difficult to keep the cotton in focus the at it danced in the breeze.

I am sure you have heard of a mackerel sky? Well today over mayo the sky was blue, and in the morning there were very few clouds at all. I dont know enough about the different types of clouds, given that I am a landscape photographer who is always watching the sky I should really. But I believe the cloud in this picture is a Cirrus Cloud. I am sure there are those of you who could tell us what kind of Cirrus cloud. But when i spotted it this morning I immediately thought of a title for a picture. " Mackerel Sky, after the cat got it"

A roasting day in Mayo today and its forecast to last a week!!! I was at Rockfleet today and as you can see the view across the bay was a little hazy.

I am one of those Landscape photographers who much prefer winter to summer. Now don't get me wrong, summer is great, but for landscape photographers the best time to get exciting pictures is just before and just after sunrise and sunset, and in the hight of the summer the sunrise is just too early and the sunset too late. And during the day the sun is very high in the sky (if we can see it at all!) and so does not make for interesting shadows etc. Anyway today I had a real urge to get some photographs, most of the day was grey and cloudy, and then there was the wimbledon final to watch, closely followed by the Grand Prix. Feeling guilty for sitting for so long in front of the tele I went for a cycle it was around this time that the sun finally started to break through and I thought "there might be a sunset. So I dashed out to Claremorris to Lough Na Annagh getting there just before sunset. This picture was made at two minutes past ten, about five minutes after the sun had set.

I had great hopes of getting out with the camera today, but it was a very grey day with no sign of the sun so I did not go out. Here is another image from last nights brief visit to Lough Conn. The mountain in the distance is Nephin.

This evening I was invited to attend the opening of the Irish Press Photographers Awards Exhibition which is in the AIB Bank for a week. Well worth a visit, the press guys do amazing work.
On the way to Ballina, I swung by Lough Conn and got this picture.

Here is another image from Clonmacnoise in Co Offaly.This is the smaller of the two round towers on the site its known as McCarthy's Tower !!I am not sure why , but I am happy to share my name with it. Locally it is also called clogas beag (little tower).

On our recent visit to Athlone we called into the Abbey at Clonmacnoise in Co Offaly. Clonmacnoise is one of the most important of the ecclesiastical sites in Ireland, there are several Celtic High Crosses and two round towers, though only one is complete. There is also a visitor centre with information about the site. This High Cross replica is in the centre. It is located in a darkened room but the cross itself is well lit to show the carvings on the cross. If I had photographed it using flash the flash on the camera would have ruined the effect of the lights, and I assumed I could not use a tripod so I set the iso at 5000! and an aperture of 3.5 ( as wide as the lens would go) I was using aperture priority with exposure composition set to -1. This is because the camera would have reacted to all the dark areas and tried to brighten the picture . Anyway this resulted in a shutter speed of 1/400sec plenty fast enough to handhold the camera.

Back home from our visit to Athlone, the weather today was pretty awful, so I did not get any pictures. And the evening does not look like it might produce a sunset so I have given myself the night off and will open a bottle of Malbec instead!. So I delved deep into the archives for a picture to post this evening and found this picture from 2010 that has never been posted. It looks like this sheep is enjoying the view of Keem Strand on Achill!

Here is another example of needing to use a very high iso. This evening Patricia and I are in Athlone, Patricia,s home town visiting her cousins. Patricia,s cousin Eamonn took us for a boat trip on Lough Ree, on the river Shannon where his son David was practicing his rowing. I brought the camera and one lens, a 24-80 f4.5 lens. Not the ideal for sport and certainly not in the low light conditions that prevailed at the time. Still it was a great opportunity. I decided I needed a shutter speed of 1000 of a second to freeze any motion, I opened the lens to its widest F4.5 and that meant , that to get the shutter speed up to 1000 I needed to set the iso to 4000!! It worked! now I realize I would have much better colour etc if the sun came out , but its amazing to be able to get these kind of results of something moving so fast in such low light.

This is a picture from my Auntie Angela's 80th birthday. Auntie Angela is the elegant lady in the light blue top standing tall at the front of the group.

I dont normally post this kind of photograph, but I thought it was a good example of what is possible with modern digital cameras, and somebody recently asked me about high iso photography.

My own mantra would be to always use the lowest iso that I can. That normally means iso200.
In this picture I was using two flashguns, off camera, to provide the main light, I was bouncing the flash off the ceiling to soften the light and reduce shadows. As you can see the ceilings were very high and because the group is so wide the flash guns were probably thirty feet back, so I put the iso up to 3200 !! this meant the flash provided plenty of light and also the camera was able to capture the ambient light resulting in a lovely bright picture. I did worry about how the quality would be effected by the high iso, but I printed 10x8 enlargements today and they were lovely.
The secret with high iso photography is , in my opinion, to keep the image as bright as you can, this may mean over exposing slightly, but keep it bright.

Very Late posting tonight!! Arrived back from Dublin, late but intime for our annual street BBQ ! I did not take any pictures!!!! But great craic was had by all!
Here is a picture of a window box spotted in Westport, Co mayo on a nice bright summers day.

I am in Dublin this evening, and very nearly failed to get a picture. After a busy day we made a dash to Dun Laoghaire Pier hoping to get a sunset. I lived close by as a child for a number of years and walking the pier brings back many memories.We were just too late for the sunset and I had not brought a tripod, so decided to try a a simple silhouette . I tried one with just the bandstand but it was not very interesting, so I asked my daughter Grainne to walk into the frame to give a bit of balance!!

Despite the lovely weather, I did not get out with the camera today. This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago at Blackhead, near Ballyvaughan, Co Clare

For a period this evening it looked like there was going to be some lovely light and maybe even a sunset. But just when I was ready to go out the sun was completely hidden as the clouds closed like a curtain in front of the sun. I went out anyway , down to the bog just down the road from the house. The overcast sky, while hiding the sun, created ideal shadowless light for a little flower photography. This is a Yellow Flag Iris that grows in wet places. we have plenty of those in Mayo and at the moment they can be found in abundance, but if the warm weather continues they wont last much longer.