Daily Blog

I seemed to spent most of the day in the car today. I had to go to Dublin and left home at 6am, got back home at 6pm only to head out again to Bonniconlon for an evening class. This picture was taken about a week ago on a walk in Kiltimagh.

No photography today, but I had a great day all the same. I spent today training three fellow photographers in using Lightroom.( Lightroom is a photo editing programme) The day flew by.
This picture was taken last week on Lough Carragh about ten minutes before sunrise. it is the same boat that is in the front of yesterdays picture, but a different angle and so a very different picture.

Here is another picture from the shores of Lough Carragh, taken early in the morning, I had to get my feet wet to get this angle, despite the apparent sunshine the water was very cold!!

Delighted to report that two of my images were awarded gold in the SWPP monthly awards for October. One in the fine art section and more importantly for me one in the Landscape section! I have entered the landscape section on 8 occasions this year and up till now had received 5 "highly commended s" but the top award kept alluding me, but at last ......
This year I have received a total of five gold awards from the swpp 2 in pictorial fine art , 2 Nature and Wildlife , and 1 in landscape. I am posting my winning Landscape here but you can see the other winning entries for October here SWPP

Oh look its a Tit with a Nikon!!

Really late posting today! Had a great day. I spent the day doing one to one photography training in the Westport area, then this evening I was at the Mayo Photography club, so my whole day involved photography! Today was the first of November and it seemed to bring the first sign of real winter with Croagh Patrick having a very light covering of snow, hopefully its a sign of things to come!!

A bit late posting today, had a lovely evening teaching a photography night class in Bonniconlon. I am returning to the birds in the garden for tonights picture. This greenfinch was feeding on the ground and would not use the perch i had set up beside the birdtable. It did occasionally land on the cherry tree however so i set up the camera to capture him on it. This was the third attempt, when pre focusing the camera I had forgotten to allow for the weight of the bird on the twig, which of course bent when he landed on it, so in the first two pictures I got I only got his head. I made a further adjustment after this picture to try and include more of his tail, but he refused to come back to the same perch.

I took this photograph a week ago on a calm morning on lough Carragh. To those of you who experienced the terrible storm in the USA I hope you have escaped harm and are able to enjoy the "calm"

The modern world is very small indeed, you may have had difficulty seeing the website yesterday, I was unable to load this picture until this morning. The reason for this ,was , believe it or not, the storm in New York ! It seems this website actually sits on a server in New York which was directly impacted by the storm, apparently it has now been moved to a "different geographic location" I don"t understand it either!!

Still in Dublin, a lovely day but did not get out with the camera until this evening, this image was made about one hour after sunset.It was a three minute exposure at f16.

Our camera club trip to the museum in the dark on Thursday prompted me to have another go at some evening time photography today, I am in Dublin, where there are more lights, this is a view across the River Liffey.

Last night I helped to lead our camera club outing to the Museum at Turlough , for a night in "low light photography". The light was certainly very low as there was very little twilight under a cloudy sky. I did not take many pictures myself, but this is one of them.
The Camera club meet every Thursday at8pm at the GMIT in castlebar, if you would like to come you are welcome, if you need more info message me , or visit the website http://www.mayophotographicclub.ie/

Here is another picture from the garden bird table. I was delighted this morning to "capture" this pair of Collared Doves, because while they are regular visitors to the garden they are also the most timid of all the visitors and take flight at the slightest sound or movement. I was also delighted because the lovely background that has been in all my bird pictures is nearly gone! The background is an out of focus cherry tree in full Autumn plumage, but the leaves are falling rapidly and by tomorrow my background will be gone,replaced by empty branches and a concrete wall!

A very dark and overcast day here in Mayo today.The leaves seem to be dropping off the trees at an accelerated rate! A tree I was admiring a couple of days ago, thinking to myself " I must get a picture of that" is completely naked today!!
This early morning shot was taken on Monday morning at Lough Carragh.

This morning I went to Lough Carragh to try and get some Autumn colours, I was not disappointed. This picture was made about half an hour after sunrise.

Here is something a little different today. I was travelling through Newport, when I came accross a vintage car rally. there were all sorts of old cars, (some of which I remembered with fondness!!) Now vintage cars aren't really my thing and are usually hard to photograph because they are never in the right setting so just look like "vintage cars" However as I drove by I noticed these two were parked in a position where it looked like they belonged, so I did a quick U turn and grabbed one shot. I applied a sepia tone to add to the olde world look!!

I was out early this morning before the sunrise. Low cloud meant the sunrise itself was not visible but there was still a lovely sky.

I hope I am not boring you, but here is another picture from through my kitchen window. This is a great tit.

Here is another visitor to the bird table. Starlings have a bad reputation but seen close up like this they are very pretty indeed. The bird table is positioned only about five feet from my kitchen window a bit too close for comfort for starlings so they are rare visitors, so I was delighted to get a picture of this one this morning.

I was in Ballina on Sunday afternoon, I went to watch my son Barry play rugby with Ballina. He had to be there an hour before the match started and even though the weather was pretty bad I brought the camera in the hopes I might get something while waiting for the match. The weather improved significantly when we arrived in Ballina, so I took a quick trip to Beleek Woods, I did not have much time but was pleased to get this picture.

It rained all night here in Mayo and its still raining ,so here is a picture made a few days ago. This is Ballylahan Castle which is situated between Bohola and Foxford, I pass it regularly and regularly stop to photograph it. On this occasion I stopped because I thought the sky above it looked interesting.