Daily Blog

I had a very busy day today, spent most of the day in the Studio photgraphing workwear again.
When I did get a chance to get out it was very late, just before sunset. It was very dull and grey and there was no sign of the sun. I went around to the back of Croagh patrick to this little waterfall, I often bring people who come for training to this spot because it is very accessible.


It was very dark this evening when I took it with an exposure of 6 seconds. As I finished the waterfall the sky began to clear and it looked like we might get a sunset afterall, but this is as good as it got.

Today was a lovely day. I only had a very short time to get out with the camera. I drove from Westport to Kilmeena with no real plan as to what I was going to photograph. For me this is rarely a good way to work, I am usually better if I have a clear plan beforehand . I was beginning to think I would not “see” anything, when I stopped to photograph these sheep.




I often explore the little roads around these areas, today was the first time I had travelled into Kilmeena on this road ( I have travelled out on this road several times)and so was the first time I had seen Kilmeena church from this perspective. I waited for several minutes for the cloud to clear from the top of Croagh Patrick to reveal the church on the summit but it would not clear.

The rain continued from yesterday into and during the whole night. It had reduced to a very soft drizzle this morning and I decided to go to Tourmakeady waterfall which would surely be full. The lack of sunshine would help . As I prepared to leave I could see a clearing to the west. It was amazing how quickly the clouds moved to the east and as I drove to Tourmakeady I was completely distracted by the changing weather and so changed my plan. I am posting a couple of photographs taken on a bog on the road to Tourmakeady, with a view of the Mweelrea Mountains.





The white bags are bags of turf, this is turf that was cut last year.


The clarity in the air after all the rain was fantastic . As the sky cleared and the sun came out I realized it would be too bright on the Waterfall and so I decided to wait until the next time we have heavy rain, I am sure I won’t have to wait too long.

The weather in West of Ireland has been truly horrible for the last couple of days and in particular today.Its a real shame because it is the holiday weekend and many people are here on holidays. We had very heavy rain all day with 35mph wind, not a day to take out the camera . So today I am posting a sunset on Clew Bay taken a few weeks ago. So if you are holidays I hope it cheers you up!

I had intended to get up for the Easter dawn, but I slept in. As it happened it was a lovely morning but I decided to stay home and take things easy. In the afternoon Patricia and I decided to climb Croagh Patrick, our daughter Grainne and Lady the dog came with us. The rain started before we left the house and got steadily worse. So while we climbed we decided to abort after 40 minutes or so. My picture opportunities were limited by the weather but I am posting a couple of photographs from Croagh Patrick.





I must go back with a tripod and do some more work with this location.

I did not get any new pictures today, I was just too busy and when I did get a chance to get out it poured rain. So I am posting a panorama I took a couple of days ago. You may recall the pastel colours at Crough Patrick on 1st April, this panorama was taken about thirty minutes later, the pastel colours had disappeared, the light levels had also fallen resulting in a two second exposure.

The day started very dull and grey this morning, and I was happy to get back between the sheets, having stuck my nose out through the curtains to check the weather. I then spent most of the day in the gallery. This evening i had to make a trip to cong and on to Galway to collect my daughter Grainne from the train. I thought this would give me a great opportunity to get some pictures. The weather was lovely as we left Westport but it soon worsened and by the time we got to Cong it was raining. It did stop raining but remained very dark, but we had some spare time and decided to explore part of the shore of Lough Corrib. The rain stayed off just long enough for me to get a few pictures and I am posting one here. As you can see there was very little light but I actually like the muted colours. We continued on to Galway in driving rain and sleet.

Once again I spent the day in the studio photographing workwear, today it was mainly boots and shoes.


This is typical of the kind of product shots I was doing today.

This evening it looked like we were going to have a colourfull sunset, but due to low cloud the sun “set” about fifteen minutes early. There were lovely pastel shades in the sky over Croagh Patrick.

I had a really busy and at times very frustrating day today. It started when on the way to the studio I took a quick detour to photograph Croagh Patrick as I could see in my wing mirror in the car that the light behind me was just fantastic, so risking being a few minutes late I swung the car around hopped out of the car and grabbed a shot only to discover I had no card in the camera!! This did not matter for the studio as the camera is used tethered to a computer and the pictures are saved directly to it. But I missed the shot. The studio shoot went well and we finished early. I was delighted with the time gained and spent most of the afternoon becoming familiar with my new printer. That was very frustrating and when I had finally mastered it I ran out of ink!!
Anyway I had a night class this evening so having spent so long with the printer I only had a 30 minute window to dash out to get today’s picture. I did not even have time to use the tripod but the light was fantastic this evening, my favourite kind of weather. Dark clouds with sunshine and showers.



I love the light on the sheep here



It does not look bad but it was hard to stand against the wind for this picture.
Fortunately I managed to avoid the showers and got back just on time for the night class.

I had a busy day with Portwest today photographing workwear, we will be busy for the next two days. The weather was horrible today and I did not get out at all. I am posting a picture I took last year, it looks like it could have been taken today !!



This was taken with a compact camera.

I did not get out with the camera at all today , as it happened it was not a great day, very grey and raining alot. This evening I had a group for a night class and we tried some still life. We photographed water droplets, it was a real hit and miss affair, hundreds of pictures were taken with only a few succeeding . it was all a question of timing! It was a great group activity though and a great laugh was had by all.



Here is an example of what we were doing.




Anne Marie Mulloy who is one of the participents on the course got this amazing picture, it shows a drop hitting the splash of another drop, an incredible shot. Anne Marie has kindly agreed fro me to put the picture up. Anne Marie calls the picture "My Lady"

Summertime began this morning, ie the clocks went forward an hour. Its great for me because it means that sunrise becomes later at least for a short time anyway. Well I was too late for sunrise but I visited Lough Lannagh in Castlebar early this morning.


Lough Lannagh Sky with Croagh Patrick in the distance





Croagh Patrick from Lough Lannagh



There were as usual a large number of swans on the lough with a fair amount of aggressive behaviour.




but one couple at least seemed very happy in each others company!

Both of today’s photographs were taken on the hoof so to speak . The first was taken as I travelled from Castlebar to Westport in the morning and I decided I would take a quick detour off the road and visited Islandeady Lough. Fortunately this boat was placed in a position that I could make a picture from,



I think the tree on the left, and the clouds above really help with the composition. Islandeady Abbey can just be seen among the trees directly above the bow of the boat.
This evening as I left Westport it looked like a really good sunset was developing, I decided I probably had five minutes to play with and took another detour.




As you can see the sun set behind low cloud and did not develop great colours, which was just as well or I would have been late, as it happened I did not even use the whole five minutes I had spare.
It is interesting to note how much the position of the sunset moves as the summer approaches. In February I took pictures from the same location and the sun was setting almost behind Croagh Patrick, now it has moved to the far side of Clare Island and Croagh Patrick is far to the left and not even in the frame.

We have had two nights of rain here in Westport and the forecast for today was grey cloud. I decided this would be ideal for waterfalls, so this morning I set out with my friend Carol to photograph some waterfalls near Tourmakeady. As we drove towards our destination the sky began to clear and the sun began to shine. To photograph waterfalls successfully it is best to go after heavy rain so there is plenty of water, but you really don’t want the sun shining as the contrast levels are often too great especially with digital.
Having arrived at our location where I knew there were a number of small waterfalls I wandered downstream for a look and discovered what was for me a new waterfall, a really nice one and so with a sense of great discovery we decided to try some pictures. Carol began by placing her tripod on the river bank and could only watch in horror as it toppled into the river! Fortunately it was easily rescued and her camera was not yet on top of it! Well the sun continued to shine and while we were in a really lovely spot the contrast levels were just too high.




This first photo shows the top half of the waterfall as you can see the contrast between the shadow areas and the white water is very high.





In an attempt to make a photograph without the contrast I selected a small part of the waterfall that the sun was not reaching.

A lot of a photographer’s time is spent location finding, and even though I did not get the pictures I wanted today I have definitely found a good location and will revisit on an overcast day. By the time we got back to Westport the cloud cover had returned.

This evening I had a one to one training session with Tom who is a friend of mine. Tom wanted to explore camera raw, and knows photoshop very well. So I shared my workflow with Tom and we converted a couple of Raw files . I found myself saying things like I don’t know why this works, it just does , as I would enter the numbers that I use when converting files. Photography is very subjective and we all develop our own ways of doing things. I am constantly learning and there is nothing I enjoy more then meeting photographers and sharing methods. I met an American photographer in the Gallery during the summer, we ended up spending the day together sharing all kinds of differnet techniques, and I learnt so much from him.( I hope he may also have learnt a little from me!)
Anyway my time with Tom today got me thinking . Why am I using the workflow I do now, is it really any different to what I did before . So I went to the archives and pulled out a picture. This photograph was taken in 2005 on a Nikon D70 and converted in 2005.



I then took the raw file and converted it using the standard method I use now, I didn’t seek to improve the picture, just used my standard workflow.





I think you would agree the pictures are quite different.


It might be interesting to repeat this exercise again in a couple of years to see how my style or methods might change


ps having posted the pictures on the site, I dont think they look that different! Ithis is because they are such low resolution to go on the web, the large files I have here are very different, so you will just have to believe me, or call in to the gallery and I will show you.!!

This morning I had a one to one photography session . John a visitor to Westport wanted to get a good picture of Croagh Patrick using his Digital Camera. Looking at the weather forecast we decided that this morning would be our best chance of a break from the grey and the rain. We agreed to meet at 9.30am, at 8am it looked like we might have to cancel as it had rained all night and remained very overcast. By 8.45 however , it began to clear from the West. By 9.30 we had a wonderful blue sky with big white fluffy clouds over Croagh Patrick, John had several pictures to choose from.



This is a quick panorama I took hand held as we went back to the car. It contains six pictures stitched together.


This evening I had a night class, Harry one of the participants came over early as he wanted to photograph some fishing reels for a website he is creating, here are a few of his pictures. As you can see this was a fairly simple set up. We used a black cloth for a background, one light with a softbox above and slightly behind the reels and a reflector when needed. The reel was rested on an empty coffee jar of which there are always plenty in my studio!!
Here is a selection of Harry's pictures

I was unable to get out with the camera at all today so I am posting a picture taken on my outing on Sunday. This sheep seemed to have very long wool , but despite that, I still thought he looked cold!




I am really struggling without my lens ( I broke my 18-200 mm lens last week.) This picture was taken with a nikkor 105mm lens that is about forty years old. When you are used to auto focus, manual focus becomes difficult! especially as I get older and my eyes fade. My little neice informed me the other day that I was getting old. I argued my case but she won out by telling me I was old because I have "THAT" colour hair and "THOSE" type of glasses. (for "THAT" read Grey, and for "THOSE" read bi focals!!)

You may remember last week I photographed Rockfleet Castle and sat waiting for the tide to come in while infact it was going out. Today I awoke to very showery weather with dark skies with low sun breaking through. I had to go to the airport in Galway leaving westport at 12noon, high tide was due at 11.15, so I decided to make a quick trip to Rockfleet for high tide. I arrived to find the tide in, the castle was bathed in sunlight and the scene looked great. the wind however was wild and blowing straight into the camera. I would have liked to use a slow shutter speed to show movement in the water but the wind was too strong, this meant that even on a tripod the camera would have moved during a long exposure.

The wind was so strong that there seemed to be constant rain falling although the scene looks bright , there was always a drop or two of water on the lens, you can see it on this picture.






I then drove to Galway and on my return journey I stopped to take this picture of Lough Carra from the side of the road.

Today I had a Landscape photography group in the afternoon. Well actually it was the Monday night evening class group who got together for a Landscape session. Monica one of the group members arranged for us to visit North mayo and she was our guide for the day. Monica took us to Kilgalligan a fantastic location on top of cliffs overlooking a beautiful bay. The weather was not great , most of the time the wind was very strong which made standing close to the cliff edge dangerous for both cameras on tripods and humans. The wind also made it difficult to make pictures using long exposures. Monica had a huge itinery planned for the group but despit the cold wind we stayed a very long time at the first location. My biggest fear was that we would lose a camera or even a photographer over the edge!!




Once we left the cliffs we visited a small beach and experimented with slow shutter speeds.

The weather was lovely today, so good that instead of watching the Rugby I decided to go out and about with Aisling ,my daughter, and her boyfriend . We visited Sheffrey woods, this is a very old woods. We had intented to go on a longer tour as far as Leenane and back up the west coast but Sheffrey was so nice that we just stayed there until I decided to rush back to Westport for a sunset. We just made it back to Westport for the sunset which was nice but not spectacular