Daily Blog

I was on the road most of the day today and once again was not able to get out with the camera. I took this picture a few days ago near Ballinrobe, truth is I nearly crashed the car when I saw the lambs in the field with coats on ! All the lambs in the field were wearing these little orange jackets.

I spent the day photographing workwear again today, the weather was pretty bad both before and after I started and finished so I am posting a couple of photographs from Mullranny taken on Monday evening. one is of a boat with Mulranny in the background,




the second is a long exposure shot taken half an hour after sunset the exposure was for about three minutes.





I love doing these long exposures you never really know exactly how they are going to work.

Happy St Patricks Day ! I had great intentions of getting up really early and climbing Croagh Patrick for the sunrise, I even set the alarm on my phone but happily ignored it !! I got up around 8am but the morning was very grey and I did not go out with the camera.
In the afternoon I was leading a group for a landscape session. We decided to go to Carronisky Beach and work back towards Westport to photograph a sunset. The wind was very strong on the beach with sand flying so we did not get many pictures. I left my camera unattended on the tripod as I assisted one of the participants the tripod was only about two feet high but it was toppled over by the wind and broke the lens!!! The lens is a Nikon 18 -200mm VR I dropped the same lens last autumn and paid over 400euros to get it fixed! Please send donations to ...........
Anyway I just had to put it aside and continue with the class, we left Carronisky and visited the Clappagh bridge this is a very unusual footbridge, the weather was very overcast but the group were still able to experiment with depth of field ,slow shutter speeds and the use of Graduated neutral density filters, the time flew by but it was very cold. We headed back to Westport in time for the sunset, when I had planned the session I was very hopefull of some good photo opportunities because the sunset and high tide were both due at 6.45. Well the tide was full but the high winds meant there were no reflections and the sun was just nowhere to be seen



The Clappagh Bridge

I spent today in the studio photographing work and safety wear, today was a good day, all the creases fell in the right places ! There were even some garments that were put aside from previous shoots because they were bound to prove difficult to do, we actually got ahead of ourselves today and had time to spare, we said we would try one of the difficult garments, they just worked!!

You may wonder why I never show you any of the photographs taken , well its simple really, the camera is attached to a computer and the photographs are saved directly to it and not into the camera. The Graphics design team in Portwest then take the photographs and prepare them for the brochure. I am attaching a link to the Portwest catalogue so you can have a look if you wish. Not all the pictures in the brochure are mine, but most of the photographs without models are. Here is the link.
http://ezine.portwest.com/brochures/ireland/pageflip.html

When I had finished in the studio I came out to find a very dark and grey evening, Patricia and I decided to travel out to the foot of Croagh Patrick to photograph some small waterfalls but the rain started as we left and quickly became heavy so we just went home. I am posting a couple of pictures taken yesterday at the desserted village on Achill. The weather has really changed, things are warming up, most people are pleased but I loved the cold weather with snow on the mountain and clear sunsets. Tonight the tide was high at sunset time but there was no sign of the sun.

I am posting a couple of pictures taken yesterday on Achill. The first is of the deserted village, I liked the cloud formation



The second is at the same location and is of a single sheep, he is actually watching a dog being walked by its owner!

I headed off to Achill this morning , too late for a sunrise , I left Westport at about 7.45. It was a funny day photographically, nothing seemed to really go to plan. Firstly I had intended to get up earlier, I had intended being on Achill for the sunrise. Secondly I had completely mixed up the tide times, I started by stopping at Rockfleet Castle, I was surprised to find the tide out, and sat waiting for it to come in, after 20 minutes or so I realised it had gone out further ! Today was a lovely day but it seemed every where I went the light just was not right for good photography, I think maybe I just could not see it. At one point I lost my light meter . I had stopped at Cloughmore on Achill, I used the light meter to asses the light, took a rubbish photograph and moved on. Twenty minutes later I realised I no longer had a lightmeter. I retraced my steps knowing that nobody had passed me in either direction, but my initial search was in vain, I was sure it was lost. Now this would not be the first thing I have left behind or lost when photographing, infact I twice lost my previous lightmeter, once finding it on a wall in the Burren after 48hours and then losing it completly maybe a year later. This occurred about five years ago. My current lightmeter was actually bought by my Dad on a visit to Boston so I really became quite frantic in my search, just as I was about to give up I found it, I had actually dropped it as I walked across some boggy ground, fortunately it was unharmed. I was delighted to get it back, but while I had struggled to make good photographs prior to this happening I was useless after that.

I am posting two black and white pictures one taken near Rockfleet Castle of Croagh Patrick



The second photograph is again of Croagh Patrick and is taken from Cloughmore on Achill, shortly before losing the lightmeter.







This evening I led a night class, we did some still life photography, it was a great evening, I divided the class into two groups, each group then had identical “ingredients “ and lights and had to create still life photographs. There was a lot of head scratching and the occasional curse as people had to do alot of problem solving. Monica, one of the participants kindly allowed me to include her picture here. If there are mistakes in tonights blog it may be because I have just finished the bottle of Chianti !

I am back in Mayo ,after a very difficult week in Cork . My Dad was laid to rest on Friday and it is hard resume normal life again. I did go out this evening to get some photographs and found it very difficult. I am posting a couple of pictures taken last week just to get the blog going again, hopefully normal service will resume tomorrow!


The first picture is a sunrise on Kinlooey Lough




The second is a sunset picture taken just outside Westport.

Today my Dad passed away in the early hours of the morning. He had been battling cancer for two years and was inspirational. I last saw him in Cork at the weekend and even though he was very weak physically he was so alert mentally that when I left him in the early hours of Sunday morning I was very confident that I would be visiting him again in a week or two, so it really came as a huge shock when my sister phoned me with the terrible news. He is such a loss to us all , but his passing is I am sure a welcome release for himself as he suffered so much .
The picture I am posting today is not from Mayo, but was taken in County Limerick on Sunday Morning as I drove back from Cork having said goodbye to my dad for what turned out to be the last time.

Today was a lovely day in mayo,I was not able to get out with the camera all day. I had a nightclass this evening which started at 6.30, just after the sunset which was glorious. The whole group agreed that we should go down to the key here in Westport to try and capture some of the twilight colours.

I travelled back from Cork today and met with one of my nightclass groups for an afternoon outing. The group took some panorama pictures of Lough Fiach which we will stitch together at the class on Wednesday. We then went to Letterkeane woods were people experimented with slow shutter speeds on some small waterfalls. On the way back from Letterkeane some of us stopped again at Lough Fiach and caught the last of the twilight of on the Lough. This picture was taken approx 50 minutes after the sun had gone down.

I am posting this from Cork. So I am using a few pictures I took yesterday on my journey here. The first two are of lambs, a sure sign of spring. My wife Patricia loves to see the lambs in the fields, when I saw these near Ballinrobe I thought of her and stopped to take a few pictures.














As I passed through Shrule which is right on the border between Mayo and Galway the castle looked as good as I had ever seen it.



I have stopped in Shrule several times in the past on my way to or from Cork, but it always seems to be raining, yesterday was lovely.

Several months ago I lost the remote control for my camera. I often use slow shutter speeds and therefore would use the remote to trigger the camera. I have missed it on many occasions when I have wanted to use shutter speeds of longer then 30seconds, as that is the longest shutter speed I can set in my camera without a cable release or remote control. I regularly use the self timer on the camera as an alternative so as to avoid camera shake. Usually when photographing landscapes I use a small aperture, this means a slow shutter speed and therefore I use the self timer with its ten second delay to trigger the camera.

This morning I was up before the sun and went to Kinlooey Lough to try and capture the sunrise. It is about two months since I was there for a sunrise and I had not allowed for the fact that the sunrise would now appear at a different point, this meant a dash back to the car to drive around the lough for a better vantage point. I just about made the sunrise, and was sorry I had not arrived ten minutes earlier.




Once the sun actually came up I started to take pictures of the other side of the Lough I had my camera set up when from behind me I heard the call of a swan as it came in to land, I looked over my shoulder and saw two swans about to hit the water, it was a spectacular sight and I grabbed at my camera which was on a tipod but of course I just fumbled and missed the shot. Never mind I thought and went back to my landscape. I set the camera to manual focus, and manual controls, using a polariser to enrich the colours I had set the camera to 1/5th of a second at f22.



As I double checked everything I heard the call of the swan again from over my right shoulder, this time I did not need to turn around to see what it was, I simply grabbed the camera off the tripod, put the polarizer in my pocket, switched on the auto focus, switched the camera to aperture priority , set the aperture to 5.6 and set it to overexpose by one stop. All this was done in the blink of an eye! I now turned and as I put the camera to my eye I saw five, yes five, swans falling out of the sky, the lighting was magical, the sun was low and partly behind them there was mist on the water and they were coming in a formation the red arrows would have been proud of! This was a career making shot! I locked focus on the leader waited a further second or so for the right moment, as it approached, I was heard to say “YOU BEAUTY “ and I pressed the shutter button on my Nikon, my Nikon responded by saying “ beep beep beep ” for 10 whole seconds!!!! The self timer was still on!! The camera fired as the fifth swan hit the water!




I just had to laugh at myself, I thought I had thought of everything and had demonstrated such speed and more then a little agility!! Of course I was disappointed but the adrenalin rush was incredible, I still feel I witnessed something really special and of course I can keep replaying it in my mind I just cant share it with you. I was back in the Gallery at 8.30 to sort a few things before heading off to Cork for a couple of days. The first thing I did on arriving in Cork was to buy a new remote control for the camera !

Another busy day in the studio photographing work clothes, today most of the clothes were high visability jackets and trousers. High visability with its highly reflective strips and dark lining are very challenging items to photograph, but the day went very well .I finished just on time to capture the sunset , as sunsets go it wasn’t great, visability levels were very low and the sky did not really develop the colours you would usually hope for after a sunset.




On returning to Westport Patricia ,my long suffering wife, pointed out these ducks who were sat on a wall outside the Chinese restaurant!




Patricia always orders the duck!!

It was quite dark and I had to set the camera to iso 1250 with an aperture of 2.8 I had a shutter speed of 60th second just enough for me to hold the camera .
Having photographed the ducks I turned my attention to the river and have included this picture taken by resting the camera on a beanbag .

Another busy day in the studio. Still photographing workwear but not nearly as frustrating today. In fact the day went well and we made a lot of progress.
I finished in the Studio at 5.30 but it was raining and there was no interesting light,and I had a night class at 6.30pm Tonight I was showing the participents how to work with raw files.So with no time to photograph anything new I will have to post a picture from a few weeks ago. It was taken in January and shows a very different sunset over Croagh Patrick. On the day it was taken that little glimpse of sunlight was the only sighting of the sun all day. I love the way the church is highlighted.

Yesterday I had a very successful day photographically speaking and I was able to post a number of pictures. Today was the complete opposite. I spent the day in the studio photographing working clothes for a catalogue, the work was very slow and it seemed that every garment was determined not to be photographed! Creases appeared all over the place, garments were re ironed, re shaped had pockets stuffed, unstuffed and just everything that could go wrong did.! When I finished this evening there was no light as it was very cloudy and I did not get a picture, so I am posting a picture of Clare Island photographed two days ago , you may remember I was chasing a sunset!

Today was a good day photographically speaking. The morning was lovely and I found it impossible to pass Croagh Patrick, the morning was so clear, the tide was going out as I began and the reek looked lovely snow peaked






. Prior to that I photographed these two horses, the sun was very low and they seemed to be warming up before they started their day.



This evening I was due to teach a night class, I decided during the day that the weather was so good and the high tide and sunset were both due at 6.15 that it might be good to get the class participents to come over early and we could try and photograph a sunset.



I was very disappointed when half an hour before sunset time low cloud came in from the sea and we never got a proper sunset. The sky was still very interesting and the high tide gave great reflections, we photographed until about 7.30, using very long shutter speeds and everybody came away with good pictures.

While today was a lovely day, I decided to wait until the evening to get my pictures.
I should know by now that if the light is right you should not put things off as you never know how things will work out.

I went to Carracally to photograph a sunset, You may remember I took a picture during the week of some of the islands, and had actually walked on to a couple of them. I got to the location knowing the tide would be in, but it in was in so far that I could not get access to the site at all and I was too low to even see the islands never mind get a sunset.


I went to another location but had missed the sunset proper, but on my way home I stopped and took this picture of reflections in a small bog pool.



I am writing this blog away from home and have discovered I have left my laptop behind. I have use of this computor but do not have access to any photo editing software so am posting this image straight out of the camera.

The weather forecasters said today would be “mainly dry with occasional showers here and there “ I set off towards Lough Mask this morning around 8am, The weather looked ok as I left but quickly clouded over, and was so bad that I decided there was no point in continuing on the journey so I turned the car for home.

Rather then go home empty handed I decided I would photograph a small waterfall near the road just to get a picture for the blog, it seemed as soom as I got out of the car it started to rain. I took a picture any way, and drove on, I stopped at a second fall and set up the camera, it started to rain again, this time persistently.

I was fascinated by the water, I noticed that a slow shutter speed resulted in bubbles at the base of the fall forming swirls, so despite the rain I took a number of pictures at various shutter speeds resulting in different swirls.




The first picture was a test to set up composition and check exposure the shutter speed is 60th second, note the bubbles .




The second picture was taken at a shutter speed of 10 seconds to show movement. Both my camera and I got soaked. I sat back into the car and turned on the heating full blast to dry us both out. The rain stopped and I moved on.




These sheep seemed pleased to see me, I expect they thought I was coming to feed them, because as soon as I stopped the car they gathered near the gate of their field. As soon as I got out of the car the rain started again, and very quickly became persistent again.




I stepped back out of the car to photograph the road ahead.

I am sure you will agree I was justified in abandoning the trip and just going home. Now I have to point out the sheep were on the left side of the road, you have seen the picture of what lay ahead,



and to my right it looked pretty dark to, although there was sunshine,



However a wide angle lens gives a very different perspective with some blue sky.
This picture was taken at 10.04, as I sat back into the car, the weather forecaster repeated her prediction “mainly dry with occasional showers here and there” I sat with the windows steaming thinking “well Ive been here and there this morning and I have occasionally got out of the car, how can they get it so right!

Well I was in the studio early today and did not get a chance to get out to take any pictures so I am posting a Panorama of Clew Bay, taken yesturday at Carrowcally .

We had a lovely morning this morning. Croagh Patrick had a fresh dusting of snow and looked fantastic against the blue sky. I decided to photograph from Carrowcally on my way I watched the summit of the mountain and when I saw the church almost visible through the cloud I stopped and took a quick photo in case it didn’t appear again.




I was right it didn’t , I spent about 40minutes at Carrocally walking onto three of the tiny islands that are situated there and are accessible when the tide is out, I was tempted to walk further out into the bay but I was not sure what time the tide would start to come in and were it would come first so I decided that it might be better to get some more knowledge of the area before adventuring out further.. I took several photos of the mountain and the islands. The cloud cover over the mountain grew thicker and the sun rose higher and I decided it was time to go home for breakfast.



I got a nice panoramic picture made up of 13 individual photos, I have decided not to post it until tomorrow, because I am in the studio early in the morning and am not sure I will get a chance to get out.

Committing to doing this blog on a daily basis has been really good for me, apart from anything else it has forced me to go out every day to get new pictures. Not that I really need to be forced to go out photographing, it might be better to say it has given me the excuse to go out every day. Today is day 56 and I am delighted to have kept going this far . Some days I have watched wonderful light and struggled to get out when I would like to, other days when the weather is particularly grey I put off going out in the hope it will improve . Today was one of those days, I got out around 5.15pm, and had to be back by 6.15 for Wednesday nights night class. It was clear that there would be no sunset so I decided to go to Westport house, I thought I might photograph a weir in the grounds and some trees. There was no water in the weir and while I did photograph some trees, the lack of any interesting light meant there not worth showing you!
I headed back to the Gallery for the night class and as I drove down the Mall in Westport, I thought that it was my best chance of a picture. It was quite dark but I used neutral density filters to slow the exposure down to thirty seconds, this smoothes the water.



The close up picture of the fountain and lights is done with the camera white balance set to tungsten this causes the blue colour which I like.