Daily Blog

I was in Cong yesterday to deliver prints and cards to "The Lady's Buttery" TheLady'sButtery gift shop who stock my prints for sale. While there I decided to make a quick visit to Ashford Castle. As you can see it was very overcast when I got there and it was inclined to rain, so I stepped out of the car, took one picture and headed on my way!

I am running a Landscape Photography Course during the weekend of 3rd-5th May. If you would like to attend you can book through the website , or message me if you need more information. details of the course can be found here..
Weekend course

My thoughts and prayers go out to all those involved in the breaking story from Boston this evening. I was running myself today, don"t know if I'll do a marathon this year I will just have to see how the training goes.

Yesterday I promised to show you the black and white picture from Enniscrone. So here is the black and white version. Hard to believe they are both the same picture, I thought the colour one was very pretty, but as I said yesterday I took the picture to be in monochrome and I am sure you will agree it gives a completely different "feel'
So which do you prefer ?

This evening Patricia and I decided to treat ourselves to a seaweed bath in Enniscrone Co Sligo. It must be five years since we last visited the baths. If you have never tried a seaweed bath I would really recommend it!! It rained all the way to Enniscrone but just as we got there , there was a clearance and before going into the bathhouse I made a quick detour to the original, now disused bath house to get a photograph. It was raining and I just had time for a hand held shot. But after our bath the rain had stopped, the wind was very strong and the clouds were racing across the sky, ideal conditions for how I imagined the picture to be . The ever patient Patricia agreed to me taking another trip back to the old bathhouse to get a "right" picture. In my head it was going to be black and white. But I thought I would show you the colour picture, maybe tomorrow I might show you the black and white !

Yesterday evening I was to meet a couple of people near Mulranny. I left in plenty of time to allow myself to get a picture or two on the way. I detoured to Kilmeena and got some pictures of clew bay , spending too long getting "one last photo" I packed up and sped towards Mulranny. As I passed through newport however I found that conditions were just perfect. The tide was high, the sea was flat calm ,and there was still a hint of twilight in the sky. I tried hard to resist the temptation to stop as I drove through the town, but realizing that it could be a long time before I might see these conditions again I did a U turn and headed down the quay to get a view of the town, working very quickly I got a couple of images and headed on my way!!

I had intended posting another Black and White this evening, but I thought I should keep the colour in this one. Taken this evening about half an hour after the sun went down, it looks like I wasn't the only one enjoying the beauty of Clew Bay and Clare Island.

Continuing with the monochrome theme, this is a picture of Dooagh Strand on Achill Island. Black and white really helps to set the mood of this image, and makes that sky look very threatening.

Keeping up the Black and White theme...
This is a picture of Keem Strand on Achill Island, this would be a good example of where the black and white version is much stronger then the colour.

There are some things that just look better in Black and White !

Dunbriste Co Mayo

Converting pictures to black and white over the last couple of days has certainly reignited my love of monochrome. For about ten years I only produced monochrome images , spending hours in the darkroom. I bought my first DSLR in 2007 it was only then that I started producing colour images, so I suppose you could say I am still new to colour!! So I am enjoying this re look at monochrome and so have decided to indulge myself have a "monochrome week " so for the next week I will only post monochrome pictures. ( I hope you dont mind) This picture is of Lough Carragh, Castle Burke to be exact, monochrome really adds to the drama of the sky!

Here is another Black and White image. I took this picture of the Killala Round Tower as I walked into the evening class I teach on a Thursday evening. The Joe Keane Creative centre is located just next to the tower. It was the sight of the airplane high in the sky that caused me to take the picture. I remember as a small boy imagining that the round towers could have been big stone rockets!!!! However, apart from in my mind, none of them ever made it off the ground !

Here is another image from my recent visit to the cave at Downpatrick Head. This cave has a double entrance I wondered about the amount of pressure that the column you can see at the mouth of the cave must be under, both from the sea when the cave fills with water and of course with the weight of the headland above it. I am sure it will stand for many thousands of years yet, but when you are there these thoughts do add to your sense of vulnerability and I suppose awe at the power of nature.

Yesterday evening i had to be in claremorris for 9pm so i went a little early to photograph a the sunset at lough Na Annagh. I was too late for the actual sunset but the colours developed in the twenty minutes or so after the sun disappeared. This picture was taken twenty minutes after sunset, it is a twenty second exposure, despite that, the clouds have hardly moved! This is the first evening in at least three weeks that we have had no wind.

Yesterday evening I was teaching a beginners class in Kilalla. Somebody wanted to know about taking black and white pictures with their camera. Of course many digital cameras will produce black and white pictures straight out of the camera, but its not usually the best way to do it. This is because the camera simply ditches the colour information, and so can often produce a "flat black and white image. However if you take the picture in colour and process it to black and white afterwards its manipulating that colour information that will result in rich black and white. This got me thinking back to my film days and all the work that went into producing a good black and white image. I was rarely happy with the "straight print" and would do all kinds of dodging and burning to make parts of an image brighter, and some parts darker to draw the eye and to accentuate parts of the image. well its no different today.
The picture on the left is a desaturated image and is typical of what the camera would produce if you set it to black and white. The picture on the left is the same image , but this one is processed in "Lightroom" using the colour information to change the tones . eg darkening the blues gives the dark rich sky, brightening the greens and the yellows gives definition to the grasses etc. Both pictures are Black and white but I hope you agree the second one is the more effective

The temperatures seem to be rising a little. I notice this morning that the wind turbines on top of the hill here in Kiltimagh have turned to face towards the north east rather then the south east where they have been for the last few weeks, the wind does not seem as cold this morning. a move to the usual prevailing west would i think really single the end of this cold spell. The spring seems to be delayed by several weeks. The days have been lovely and bright though. I have not got out for a few days. this image from Lough Conn was taken on a beautiful looking morning. the picture looks nice and sunny, but it was really really cold.

Here is another picture taken only minutes after the one I posted yesterday., Changed to a 70-200mm lens at 200mm.

This picture was made a couple of nights ago, when seeing there was likely to be a nice sunset I made a dash to Lough Nambracknagh which is about five or six miles from the house. I got there just on time . This is a thirty second exposure, you can get some idea of the windy conditions by the movement in the clouds across the sky.The thirty second exposure is also what gives the water the impression of being so smooth, while in fact it was quite rough.

Had a great morning this morning. I went to Mulranny to meet Damian for a one to one lesson. Damian wanted to "improve his landscape skills". We met at the hotel at 6.45am and drove a short way out the Achill road to a spot on the greenway where, if there was a sunrise, we would see it over the Nephin mountain range. The wind was incredible, it was absolutely freezing and despite using tripods it was almost impossible to hold the cameras steady. It seemed fitting that today was fools day!!!! If anybody saw us out with our cameras in the dark they would certainly thought we were fools. Anyway we did get a half decent sunrise which made it all worthwhile . Once the sunrise was over we stopped at another couple of locations before returning to the hotel for breakfast at 10am. breakfast was very welcome.
After breakfast I shared my processing techniques and we processed a couple of the images Damian had made in the morning.

I had great intentions to go out early this morning to photograph a sunrise for Easter Sunday. But we had a cold and grey morning with no sign of a sunrise. so a few minutes ago as i thought "what can I put up for Easter that would be relevant for the day "I spotted Patricia's lilies. This is a very simple image. The Lily is held in a clamp on the kitchen table. The light is from the patio door with one curtain closed to prevent light reaching the blanket that Patricia is holding to provide the dark background, the camera is hand held with a 90mm lens ,shutter speed 100 f5, and iso 800. So there you have it just a couple of minutes and really simple set up, and two minutes on the computer to convert to Black and White..... Happy Easter

Last night I went with a couple of other photographers back to Dunbriste to try and get into the cave for a "lightpainting " photo of the cave and the sea stack. Low tide was at 1.20am! Arriving at 11pm we spent some time on top of the cliff taking photos before meeting up with my friend Alistair . Alistair is local coast guard and knows the area intimately . Even though the tide was at its very lowest and the sea seemed calm there was actually a very active swell. We watched as part of the area we were intending to walk on would be dry for several minutes then would be covered as waves would suddenly breach the shore line,and we were looking at the safest part of the journey. We watched for twenty minutes or so to see if things would improve but in the end decided it was not worth the risk and we headed home. I was very grateful that Alistair had come out with us because even though we thought we had all the information, tide times, wind direction etc Alistair's local knowledge was much more important. On the journey home we stopped to photograph Ballylacken castle. This picture was taken at 1.50am !!