Daily Blog

I had a job on this morning photographing a house for sale so I got no pictures (apart from the house of course!)and this evening it is pouring rain, I am about to start an evening class, tonight we are repairing old photographs.
yesterday I was very lucky because I got good pictures at both sunrise and sunset. it always amazes me how short these two events are. I reached this tree a couple of miniutes before the sun I had not intented to photograph there but as I drove past I saw the tree and turned the car around. I was a little disapointed that the tree trunk was not a little higher above the horizon but once I had decided to stop I stayed put. The sun rose very quickly and I struggled to get the exposures right and keep the tree between me and the sun. I could have just gone for a straight sillohette with a black tree and a black base but I wanted to show the light as it crept along the frosted ground towards me. once the sun rose just a little higher the whole thing became too bright and you could no longer see the "creeping light"

I had a very exciting day p[hotgraphicaly, I happened to be out before sunrise and had decided to travel to Knock, but I was distracted by a tree in a field that the sun was clearly going to come up behind so I stayed and photographed it. I have not looked at the photgraphs yet and have left the memory card in the Gallery so I will post the picture another day. This evening I decided to visit the same location as yesterday for the sunset. It was very different this evening, lacking in any cloud meant again it was a little disapointing. I had to be somewhere else and so was limited for time, but stayed as long as I could after sunset to let the colours develop. I was reluctantly putting the camera away in the car when suddenly all the roosting crows in the trees to my right lifted as one and flew into the shot.I believe such a large flock of crows is called a murder ! The camera had been operating at 1 second exposures, which would be no good for the birds, so I quickly shifted the iso to 1600 and the aperture to f3.5 this gave me a shutter speed of 1/80th second , just fast enough! I took a couple of shots and reluctantly got back in the car and drove away!

I had an opportunity to go out with the camera today at about 2.30 but decided to wait until 6.15, why , well because that was the time of sunset and today it would coincide with high tide so I was looking forward to some good reflections if the wind stayed calm. Here is the result!




As you can see the sunset did not happen because huge clouds came down in the hour or so before and during sunset. I did consider just going home and posting a picture from the archives but decided that no, this is the real world of the landscape photgrapher, For all the planning, watching the weather forecasts, tide times, sun positions, location finding, and of course getting to places on time and perfecting your camera techniques you are still have no control!

The weather in mayo was horrible today. Typical it is a bank holiday weekend. Anyway it has rained all day really heavy. I was lucky enough to be on the road early this morning and recorded the sunrise, the light was fantastic for about 5 minutes then the sky just went dark and it rained all day

A couple of weeks ago Harry feeney asked me if I would like to exhibit a "few picture" at the Foxford Woolen Mills , I would be sharing the space with Harry himself and my friend and photographer David Browne and possibly others. I was delighted and of course agreed. Yesterday I phoned Harry " how many pictures should I bring Harry one, two, three, maybe " Harry response shocked me " I was thinking 15 to 20" . So today was spent printing and framing and of course delivering the pictures to Foxford. So I did not take any pictures today and am posting a picture of Croagh patrick taken yesterday, notice the swans on their flypast.

I had a one to one lesson this morning with John. John is a regular visitor to Westport and we have had a couple of classes together. John just wanted a "little refresher" . We went out to Rossbeg, the tide was out and we were able to go a long way out before we reached water. John very quickly remembered all he had learnt on his last visit and was quickly making adjustments to his camera like a pro! We had about twenty minutes of lovely low light which showed up lovely colours of Croagh patrick and its reflection in the bay. We were also honoured with a "flypast" of swans. I had left the camera bag in the car so only had a 50mm lens on the camera so it was a little frustrating as they made two approaches and we could see them comming right accross the bay I would have had plenty of time to put on a longer lens if only I had brought it. Anyway I did manage to get a few pictures, here is one of them.


Follow the Leader

I often pass this group of horses in a field on the Castlebar road near Ballyvary road, on this occasion I stopped and made this picture which is a panoramic picture made up of a total of 12 individual pictures but there are 17 horses!

I spent the day in the gallery today, catching up on some printing and completing some orders. It rained for much of the day, which made me all the more grateful for the wonderful weather we had for the weekend workshop. I did not take many pictures while doing the workshop because as instructor I have to concentrate on the participants, but I did manage to catch a few, though not with the usual attention I would give. This picture was taken at Doolough.



Please visit the blogs from the last couple of days to see the kind comments left by the Landscape Photography Course participents

I have just finished the weekend Landscape photography course with Magda, Jacinta and Carmel. we had a great couple of days. we were up for the sunrise on Kinloughy Lough this morning, but it was a little disapointing, there was magic light for only a few seconds. As it clouded over we visited the waterfalls on Owenwee river, it was a struggle to get the girls away to get them back to the bed and breakfast for their breakfast.!! We spent the rest of the day working on their pictures in photoshop. The hardest part of the day was when I asked them each to choose only five pictures to edit!!. At the end of the day we printed and framed one picture from each of them . here are the pictures;


Lakeside Tree by Jacinta



Reflections by Magda


Sunset with boat by Carmel.

I have just finished day one of a two day Landscape workshop. Magda, Jacintha and Carmel came from Dublin for the two days. We met this morning at 8.30 in the gallery and spent the morning doing the technical stuff, camera metering, histograms etc before going out and about for the afternoon. We had great fun and a fantastic day weather wise, I joked that I had booked a sunset which was due at 6.38, so we had to leave other interesting locations earlier then we wanted, to get to Rossbeg for the sunset. Well thank you Lord, I had just ordered an ordinary sunset but what we got was the delux version! Following the sunset we waited around to see the colours of the twilight develop and only for Carmel ran out of memory cards I think we might still be there!. Anyway we returned to the studio for a short introduction to photoshop and are meeting again in the morning at 7.30 for a sunrise on a local lough. The forcast is not great but we might be lucky!




Sunset at Rossbeg



The three girls capture the twilight

I spent all day today in the gallery and am teaching a night class tonight so I did not get out at all. I am teaching a weekend landscape workshop to a small group for the weekend and am really looking forward to that., Lets hope the weather is kind to us.

So am am posting another picture from yesterday mornings river walk.

I got up early this morning to another very cloudy day, I was delighted because I had a second chance to get the pictures I missed yesterday ! I got to the Owenwee river just outside Westport at 8am . I took pictures for nearly two hours on a stretch of about 70 yards ! And I would have stayed longer only I had to open the Gallery. Being on location for two hours does not mean I took lots of pictures, it just means I took my time and enjoyed being somewhere special.

This evening I had a small window of time to get some photographs.The weather was very cloudy and calm, ideal for waterfalls and with all the fallen leaves I was really looking forward to it. My friend Michael came with me , we got to our location and had approx half an hour to get the pictures. I made my way onto some rocks in the middle of the river and set up the tripod, composed my picture and pressed the button..... no picture. I had left the memory cards back at the gallery!! I think Patricia who was back in the gallery could probably hear my exclamations!!!

So I am forced to post a picture made yesterday morning..

Well this post is a little late going up, The picture was taken first thing in the morning at Westport house. I was busy all day and so was unable to prepare the blog until late in the evening at home in Kiltimagh. I still have not got Broadband in the house since moving back, so i was using a mobile internet but there was just no coverage, could be the foggy weather, but anyway it had to wait until I got to Westport this morning (13th )

Yesterday a warning light appeared on the dashboard of my car. Patricia who was driving it at the time asked somebody in a garage what it meant. "The battery is not charging" was the reply. This morning I sat in to the car , it started first time but I thought i should lift the bonnet and have a look. Now I know very little about cars and looking under the bonnet is normally a futile business but it satisfies my male ego. but on this occasion it was worth the look, I had figured that battery not charging could mean the fan belt was slipping but infact there was NO fanbelt, it was great to be able to go to the garage and tell them what was wrong, rather then the usual anxious wait while they tell you! Anyway it was a simple job to get fixed and not too expensive, I collected it at lunchtime and on my way back to the gallery I stopped to get this picture of the Mall in Westport in all its autumn glory.

They say one of the disadvantages of digital photography, is that because we dont make prints there is a danger that generations of ordinary photographs will be lost due to computors crashing and the changing technology which means that files we save today may be unreadable in the future, whatever happened to floppy discs, cassette tapes and VHS ?.

I have lost many pictures myself on dead computors. I started using hard drives as backup in 2006. This evening I was going through some of these hard drives looking at old photos. Now they are not that old , I only started to use a digital camera in 2005. It is amazing though to look at pictures taken only a few years ago and compare with those taken today, the difference is remarkable, I use my digital camera very differently now compared to only a few years ago. We are always learning!
This picture of Rockfleet was taken in 2006, it cant be repeated because the boat is gone, apparently it was burned on a bonfire!! I think it should have had a preservation order put on it, to preserve it for photographic purposes!!

Another cloudy day warm but with very little light. Ideal weather for Autumn colours with streams . The low light levels helping to keep shutter speeds slow to give movement in the water. Suddenly the leaves are falling , winter is just around the corner, but over the next couple of weeks expect to see more pictures of streams and leaves!!

Well after all my planning yesterday, making sure I knew were the sun would be at different times for todays wedding, the sun did not show at all!! Low cloud and misty rain greeted us this morning , fortunalely the mist cleared but the light levels were very low. Joanna and John were a really lovely couple, when we arrived at Joanna's house this morning to start taking pictures we were sat down to a full cooked breakfast!! Anyway, after breakfast I took these pictures. On my night class in Kiltimagh during the week I was showing people how to take portraits using just window light, these three pictures rely totally on the light from the window, and Grainne my daughter held a reflector .

I am photographing a wedding tomorrow, so I went out this afternoon to check out the different locations, for sun position etc. I was glad I did as I had completely mis read one location and I was assuming the sun would be comming from one angle ,but I was out by about 45 degrees !! In truth it would not make much difference tomorrow as I could have easily adapted to the unexpected sun position, but it is always better to be prepared. Anyway while I was out I got a couple of pictures. The first one provides conclusive evidence of the depth of the recession here in Ireland......


Is that two construction workers guarding the potatoes ??

and the second shot ?



well thats just a bum shot!!

Another nice day in Mayo, showery but bright, but there is definitly getting cooler and so the colours of the trees are beginning to turn. This picture was taken at Letterkeane woods. Lets hope that we get a few cold nights before the wind and rain!