Daily Blog

The St Patricks day celebrations have concluded after a "long" weekend. I will post more St Patricks day photos tomorrow.

I took this picture of Croagh Patrick from close to Ballintubber on the eve of St Patricks Day .

What a lovely day we had today, sunshine and showers with very dramatic skies. I did not get out much with the camera though because it is Mothers Day, so we went out for lunch and to the garden centre! I did get out for a few minutes just before sunset though, it looked like there was going to be a very dramatic sunset but after I took this picture the sun disappeared behind low cloud and the colours I though were going to develop didn't.

No Landscape pictures today , but here are a few pictures from the Parade in Kiltimagh.

The weather this morning was disappointing we had been promised heavy rain overnight , which we got, " brightening from the west". Well it looked like the brightening was not going to happen. However we had arranged to go to Castle Bourke at Ballintubber to feed a lamb, so we set off at 4.45. The further we went the brighter it got and when we arrived at about 5.20 we were in full sunshine! great fun was had feeding the lamb and watching them play .



Happy ST PATRICKS DAY!!

It rained most of the day today, real heavy rain. I spent most of the day on a days training indoors in Castlebar. But just as my training finished and I went to drive home the sun came out !! Delighted, I did a detour to Castle Bourke. that is the name of the ruined castle you can see in the picture, located just outside Ballintubber. The sun shone long enough for me to get a few pictures but then the dark grey cloud you can see in the bottom of the sky covered the sun completely and I went home. To get to Castle Bourke you actually drive through a farm, on closing the farm gate I met john the farmer who was tending to some new lambs, we had a little chat and john agreed that I can go back tomorrow and photograph the lambs. ! So I am really looking forward to that, hopefully the weather will be good.

At long last ! The camera arrived back all fixed, the reunion was almost emotional! Very cloudy day though, with no sign of the sun all day, still we went for a walk, there were plenty of signs of spring, including this willow catkin.

Today I was a bit like a small boy waiting for Christmas ! I got an email yesterday to say my camera had been fixed , and dispatched for 24hour delivery. try as I might I could not resist looking out the front window every time I heard anything that could be a delivery van ! But it did not arrive :-( so hopefully tomorrow..... in the meantime here is a cloud picture I found this evening.

Still without the camera, but am hopeful it could be here tomorrow! This picture was taken back in July and is of the lighthouse at Blackhead Co Clare. I was actually fishing with 3 of my children ( the youngest of whom is 20) I set the camera up on a tripod in preparation for a sunset and had a 10stop ND filter on it to show movement in the clouds. For a while it looked like there would be no sunset , and when it did happen it all happened so quickly that I had to remove the ND filter, I still got a good picture which I have posted back in july. So when I looked this evening for a picture for tonight I was happy to find this one, so I got two pictures for the site, several of the "kids" fishing , but between us we got no fish, luckily we had bought sausages earlier in the day!

Still no camera, so I spent some more time experimenting with Lightroom 4.
its a great opportunity to go through old files, and pick out the pictures I did not use the first time round. this picture was taken two years ago!!

Tried out the new "Lightroom 4 " programme today. It has some interesting new features . I processed this image on it , the photograph was actually taken on Old Head Beach last September.

I got "image of the day" for a THIRD time onLokofoto

My camera is fixed!! Yipee. !! However I won't get it back until Wednesday, maybe even Thursday! so until then , back to the archives.....
this picture was taken on Mulranny Beach a couple of months ago.

Still waiting for my camera to be returned from the repair shop. So back to the archives for todays picture taken in January.

I have just arrived back from Belfast having buried Uncle Jimmy. Funerals are always so sad but are also great times for families to come together so it was great to connect again with relatives from Clonakilty in West Cork , from Dublin and from Belfast in the North. Family is so important and we always come away from funerals vowing to keep in contact and then comes the next funeral and we are one less and regret the time passed, and resolve again to keep up the contact! I really must , will , try harder.
I took no pictures today so I am posting a picture taken at sunrise at Pontoon some time ago.

I am in Dublin this evening and in Belfast tomorrow for the sad occasion of the funeral of my uncle James McCarthy. Uncle Jimmy is the last of my Dads brothers so his passing marks the end of a generation. Like my Dad, Eugene,who passed away 2years ago this week Jim served many years as a sailor.He was a perfect gentleman and he will be greatly missed. I took this picture of Uncle Jimmy two years ago. May he rest in peace.

We have just had our third day of really nice weather, thats three in a row, I hope it wasn't the summer!I am still without my camera, I had hoped to get the call from the repairers today to tell me what is wrong and how much it will cost to fix. ( donations gratefully accepted!) But they did not call which means it has not even been looked at yet, I knew I should have kept it for the weekend. never mind, this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago near Woodfield outside Kiltimagh.

A lovely day in Mayo today, but with my camera away being fixed I stayed home. but I did go out for a few minutes as the sunset and took this picture with the compact camera.

I know you have seen this picture before, but I learnt today that it received a Gold award in the SWPP competition for February! I had made a new years resolution to enter the SWPP competitions this year but missed the January deadline. So i was delighted to get a Gold at my first attempt this year. My Landscape picture from Keem strand also received a "highly Commended" !To see the winning images visit SWPP

The Best Camera in the world....is the one you have with you! my camera is away to be fixed . I am glad to report that An Post ( The Irish Postal service) did deliver it to the repair shop within 24hours, but just as I feared, they, won't look at it until "early next week".
Anyway When I saw this sunset last night I had my little panasonic compact camera with me and for that moment it became my "best camera in the world"

Today was interesting to say the least! I was photographing the children in the local playschool . Just before I left for the school as I did my final gear check my camera packed in!! ie the autofocus stopped working. Now of course I do have a second camera for just such occasions but my daughter has it in Dublin. So I decided its Ok I can manually focus and everything else appeared to be working fine. I had forgotten that about 18months ago I had broken my Nikor 80-200, 2.8 lens. What happened was that on an occasion as I excitedly ran across some rocks to get a picture I fell and the lens (and Camera) had helped break my fall, anyway as a result the lens has been unable to manually focus ever since but the autofocus worked fine, so never wanting to be without my equipment I did not send it away for repair . I did not even think about this until in the playschool with the first child in front of me I went to focus the lens! So I had a camera that would not auto focus and a lens that would not manually focus!!! I got over this by using a shorter lens but I can tell you its not easy to manually focus on three year old children even when they are sitting still, thats because they NEVER actually sit still!

Once the job was finished I then had to decide what to do about the camera should I send it away today or wait until after the weekend, I don't need auto focus for Landscapes and the forecast for the weekend is good and given all the bad weather we have had I was looking forward to getting out with the camera. I decided that I should send the camera away today, so it was posted this evening from kiltimagh. As I came out of the post office the sun came out and I regretted sending it. Then I thought I am always telling people who come to me for lessons with compact cameras that if you use then correctly you can get good pictures from them and the size of the camera does not matter. So I came home and hunted for my 6 year old compact camera and went to find a picture. So here it is...