Daily Blog

At last ! the great depression that has been over the country for the last several days has lifted. I headed off to Ross Strand in Kilalla this morning in the hopes of seeing the sun rise. It remained fairly grey at sunrise time but as the morning passed so did the clouds and eventually the sun put in an appearance.
We had a good night in the camera club last night, it was great to meet some of my "virtual friends" from facebook. hopefully you enjoyed the night and we will see more of you in the future.

Non stop rain in Mayo!! I know I wont be out with the camera again today so just to get a new picture for the blog I thought I'd do something indoors. So here is a picture of teddies who still live in my daughters room ( despite the fact that neither of my daughters live here anymore!) The photo is made in a dark room using only a small torch to light the "models".
Its a 30 second exposure to allow me to "paint" the whole scene in light from the torch. I am giving a class on the technique in our local camera club next month.
If you live in Mayo and would like to join a camera club, the Mayo Photographic Club begin their new year tonight at 8pm at Lough Lannagh Village. Tonight, Conrad Harley , a fellow member and myself are demonstrating the use of Off Camera Flash. next week( Monday 14th) we are starting a six week beginners class for club members, I will be leading that myself, classes will start at 6.30 prior to the club meeting. so why not join the club and avail of FREE lessons!!
Here is a link to the Mayo Photographic club MPC

I was not out with the camera today, its so overcast and dark that even if I had the time I don't think I would have been inspired! This view of Achill was taken on a day with very little colour, so I converted it to Black and white and then applied a sepia tone. I think its quite a nice effect.

I took this picture yesterday evening on my way into Westport. The skies cleared for ten to fifteen minutes just as the sun set, it was the first colour other then dark grey we had seen in the sky for several days. Knowing I might not get to a preferred location for a sunset picture on time, I just stopped at the side of the road and quickly took 3 or 4 pictures. Glad I did because it was all gone only ten minutes later.

How much light do you need to make a good photograph? With modern digital cameras the truth is you need very little. It was another dull day in Mayo a good day for some indoor photography. I got together with my friend Sinead and we did some window light pictures of my son Barry. For this picture we almost fully closed the curtains so the only light in the room was on Barry's face. I am including a picture of the window so you can see what we did.

Of course it did mean using a tripod and a very high ISO.

ISO 1600, f4 1/30second






This is the set up in the room, the bottom of the curtains are pegged together, and of course in this pic Barry has a white t shirt on.

If you are in Mayo you will know that this picture was not taken today! We have not seen even a glimmer of the sun today and looking at the forecast I don't think we will for several days yet.
This is Lough Cullen 10 minutes after sunrise on Christmas day. 200mmlens f18 1/400th second.

Here is something a little different today. The weather has been pretty bad here in Mayo today, that coupled with a severe dose of Man-flu meant I did not take the camera outside. But I did do a little experimenting indoors last night. I cant tell you how many pictures I had to take of drops of water before finally getting the timing just right on this one!

Happy New Year

This picture from Lough Carragh was taken while waiting for the sunriseone morning earlier in December, while the colours are lovely they are also very muted.

Here is another picture from the shores of Lough Cullen. taken about fifteen minutes before sunrise the colours were extraordinary . This is one of the many little beaches along the shore, I have often stopped here during the day but have never managed to get what I would call a good picture, the rocks seem to spoil any composition I have tried. But the whole scene looks completely different in this light.

Most of the images I post here are planned. By that I mean have gone somewhere to view the sunrise or sunset and will know where and at what time it will be and will have thought about the foreground interest etc. But this picture was taken a couple of evenings ago from the side of the road in Kiltimagh. The weather had been bad all day and I decided not to bother going out as there would not be a decent sunset. I went up town on an errand and saw this! I did not have time to get to a suitable location so just enjoyed it from where I was!

Yesterday I posted an image of a small lake at sunrise. I arrived at the location just on time for the sunrise and on parking my van I took the camera out of its bag and decided as I had no time to put on my boots I would just run up the little hill with the camera and tripod and get the picture, and not go wandering around .So I put the camera on the tripod with a 24-85mm lens and a filter holder picked up the little pouch of filters and left the camera bag in the van. I was in the process of taking the picture you saw yesterday when somewhere in the distance to my left I could hear an unmistakable sound . Dam! why did I leave the camera bag behind, I need the long lens. still unable to see what was making the sound I had time to readjust my camera. take it off the tripod, zoom to 85mm, switch to auto focus, remove the filter, change the exposure settings from 1/8th second at f22, too 1/400th second at f4.5 when the two swans came within range and I "shot" them a couple of times. But if only I had brought the camera bag I could have got much closer, this is a very cropped image.

When i sat to write this post I tried to think of how to describe the sound of swans flying, but i just could not come up with a word, so I "googled it" and found this recording just click hereSwans

On Wednesday morning I travelled out to this little lake , near Woodfield just off the road between Kiltimagh and Kilkelly , getting there just on time for the sunrise.

Here is another picture from Christmas morning, taken just as the sun came over the horizon. Taken from outside Healy's Hotel , Pontoon.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.
I can' t complain, I was up early enough to witness God's creation at its very best!
This is the sunrise over Lough Cullen at Pontoon on Christmas morning. And home on time to cook the breakfast for those that missed it!

Wishing you all a VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS.


This picture of the Christmas story is from the windows in the back of the church at Befeenaun County Mayo.

Yesterday I went to Lough Nanbrachna to photograph the sunset. I left the house giving myself plenty of time, and I was nearly distracted along the way by other potential photographs in the lovely evening light. I decided however to get to the lough early as the last time I visited I was rushing through mud and wet to get to the right position as the sun set. It was just as well I was early as this picture was taken twenty minutes before the sunset . As you can see in the picture there is some low cloud on the horizon which meant the sunset itself was disapointing but the magic had already happened. I have used a 10 stop ND filter to give a long exposure so as to get the movement in the clouds.
iso200, f11, shutter speed 30seconds.

Wild storms here last night lots of rain and very strong winds, parts of the country lost electricity and trees were blown down. We seem to have excepted the worst of it in Kiltimagh. Listening to the wind at 2am I decided that I would stay in bed this morning. I felt very guilty then when I did get up around 10am because we had a beautiful morning and maybe I could have got a sunrise!! I am just a little worried that this photography lark really is an obsession !

here is a sunrise picture from Mulranny taken a couple of weeks ago.

I was at the airport early this morning. Unusually for 22nd december it was not to welcome family home for Christmas, but it was to say goodbye to our son Barry who has gone to Liverpool to spend Christmas with his girlfriend. Only one of our four Children will be home for Christmas this year which is a little sad. But we have planned a family get together for the end of January so we have that to look forward too.
There is no sign of snow here, but plenty of rain this morning, despite being out so early there was no sunrise either .
Here is a snowy picture from a couple of years ago, just to try and get a feeling of Christmas!!

Well the 21st of the 12th 2012 has arrived and so far we have survived! Though I am told the apocalypse could happen any time before tomorrow morning, but so far so good. I had hoped to photograph the sun setting on the winter solstice this afternoon but the sun has failed to appear at all today and it looks very unlikely that it will . So I am putting the camera away to concentrate on helping get the house ready for Christmas!