Christmas Holidays

I am just back from a few days over in Westport on a short break after all the rushing around before, during and after Christmas. The children love the idea of the holidays and are always asking when and where are we going next. This time we went over to the west coast, Westport Co Mayo. The weather was wonderful with nice sunny days (great for getting out but no clouds for my photography) and cold nights. I did manage to get out every morning for sunrise and evening sunsets because this time of the year the days are short with sunrise at 8:50 and sunset at 16:30 or there about. The above image was taken down on Keem Beach, Achill Island. You follow the road all the way along the island until you can go no further.  This is one amazing drive down towards the beach as the road is right on the side of the mountain with just a grass bank between the road and a couple of hundred meters drop into the ocean. The best piece of equipment any photographer should have with them is a pair of wellies. The tripod and myself were in the water for this image (my poor tripod goes through hell). The amount of visitors on the beach who were standing well back so not to get their feet wet, but not me and my tripod. I must have gave them a good laugh. I love the way movement of the water is captured (using a slow shutter speed) and the ripples patterns in the sand in this image. I have a load of images from here trying to get the water and sand movement sequence right and  I think this is the best one. Look out for more posts form this my final photo trip of the year. I will not be taking and more photos until the annual family New Years Day walk in the mountains.

Camera Lens Hood ?

How do you protect your camera from the elements?
Answer: a Fedora !
No seriously, this comes in very handy when you want to shade the front element of your lens from the sun. You can't your your standard lens hood when you use your filters and the cost of a lens hood for the Lee Filter system is mad. Cable release in one hand and the hat in the other. Take your image then put the hat back on your head to protect you from the sun. Works both ways. A wonderful cost saving tip in these hard times.

Thanks to Peter Cox for the use of his spare hat in the making of this image.

Shoot Better Landscapes Part 1

Here is a few hints and tips for better landscapes.
This is part one and I will post part two in a couple of day. Use the upcoming holidays to study them and start to put them into practice.

1. The Idea: You need to start with an idea, a germ of inspiration that will give birth to a stunning image. Without a starting point or an objective you'll find yourself aimlessly wandering.
2. Maps: First thing first, study a map of your chosen area to decide where to start. Google Earth can also be useful.
3. Get out there: There's no substitute for getting your boots muddy and eyeballing the lie of the land. Doing so from a car never works, get out there and use the most useful piece of photographic gear you have available to you: your eyes.
4. Seasons: How will the seasonal factors affect your shot. Does it cry out for autumn colours, or a frosty morning?
5. Sunrise or Sunset: Once you have found your chosen spot, consider how the light will paint the landscape at different times of the day. Is it a sunrise or sunset shot?
6. Bearing of the Sun: The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, right? Wrong. Here in these northely latitudes there is a massive seasonal variation from sunrise in the northeast in the summer to southeast in the winter. Consider exactly where the sun will rise or set for your chosen time of year.
7. Obstructions: Look around you. Is there a hill that will cast a shadow across the scene as the sun dips? Will those trees to the east mask the rising sun?
8. Weather forecast: Every landscape photographer is a weather forecast junkie. Check the forecast regularly and try to read between the lines to ascertain whether the lighting conditions you need could transpire.

9. Cable release: You need to keep your hands away from the camera when you're making the exposure, so always use a cable release in combination with a tripod. And if you loose your cable release use the camera's self-timer instead!
10. Check your batteries: Always carry enough spares to avoid them dying on you while on location. The weather can shorten battery life- in cold conditions it's worth keeping a spare in your clothing, underneath your main jacket, so it remains a normal temperature and ready to use in case the one in the camera gives up.
11. Polariser: This filter has a magic touch, saturating the colour in a scene, making rich greens, glories blue skies and fluffy clouds that look almost 3D. Polarisers also make a nifty neutral density filter as well, cutting the light down by two stops.
12. Graduated Filters: Skies are more often than not much brighter than the land and therefore need balancing with the use of graduated filters. They come in different densities, cutting the light by 1, 2 and 3 stops. There are both hard and soft gradient types also.
13. Compass: If the shot doesn't materialise on the first visit it's worth coming back another day when the light is right. Part of the preparation is knowing where the sun will be at a particular time and therefore a compass is useful.
14. Tripod: A tripod enables you to keep your camera steady, so that you can use a slow shutter speed to correspond with the small apertures required for plenty of depth of field.

15. Know your equipment: Only once you can use your equipment unthinkingly will your creative mind truly be free.
16. Know yourself: Don't be afraid to change direction. Accept what genre truly suits you - it may not be the same as that which you most admire.
17. Persist: If you really want to develop your photographic eye persistence is required, almost to the point of obsession. Absolute dedication is all that separates the good from the great.
18. Leave your camera at home: Sounds odd? Think photographically as you look about you in your daily life, when you are without your camera. This mental editing process will refine your eye. Tou will reach a point where you know exactly what a photograph will look like, and exactly which is the best way to make that image.

19. Keep is simple: When looking for a subject to photograph, compose your shot to remove as many un-neccessary objects as possible. A clean and simple composition is an essential ingredient to an eye-catching image.
20. Work in odd numbers: Odd numbers are always very effective in photography, especially threes. Any subject matter should work well this way, maybe three foreground rocks, or three trees on the horizon. It's up to you, but always remember that odd is more visually pleasing than even!
21. Use lead-in Lines: A good composition will consist of lead-in lines which draw the viewers eye from the foreground of the image towards the middle and then background. Obvious lead in lines would be a road, river or pathway, winding throughout the image. Less obvious lead ins could be a line of trees, rocks or waves breaking on the shore.
22. Foreground, middle and background: To achieve a strong composition, there should be subject matter in each of these places and they need to work in harmony. Look for subjects which compliment each other throughout the frame, this could be in appearance, colour or their association to each other.
23. Rule of thirds: Compose your image following the rule of thirds and you won't go far wrong. Place the horizon on the first or second horizontal line, and place your focal point at one of the intersection of the lines.
24. Don't dominate the foreground: A wideangle lens helps to accentuate foreground and create shots full of impact. But unless you are careful, the foreground subject will dominate the frame and throw the composition off balance.
25. Watch out for unwanted items: An obvious one, but something that we all fall foul of occasionally. Once you have composed your shot, look carefully through the viewfinder for any unwanted items such as crisp packets, bottles etc. These can be removed so much easier before taking the photo than in the computer afterwards.
26. Go low or high: It is natural to take photographs at standing height. But often compositions can be improved dramatically by setting your tripod nearer to the ground. By doing this you can maximise the intricate detail near the ground and give people viewing your shot a far greater sense of being there. Alternatively, if opportunity allows, try setting up your camera at a higher vantage point to gain another alternative view.
27. Use a small Aperture: With landscape photography, a small aperture of f/16 - f/22 will allow you to capture the full depth of your subject matter in detail.

Ignore all the above
All the above tips are just a guide. Rules are there to be broken, and doing so can often make the most dramatic images. Don't be afraid to try something different.

What The Duck

No Joke !

This is no joke, or trick photo. Yes that is a car in the sand on the beach down in Duncannon, Co Wexford.

I was walking around the beach and spotted soomething in the sand. It was a bit of a walk out to the object and was only when I was up close that I could see it was in fact a car. Don't know what type of car, but if you know please let me know.

What Direction ?

And you wounder why people get lost. Sign posts like this might have something to do with it. This sign post can be found in Ballyvaghan, Co Clare on your way thru The Burren to Lisdoonvarna.

Port Beach Sunrise

Here is another view form Port Beach taken on a different trip very early in the morning. We are looking southwards in this one. This is a different image than what I usually do. It's a colour image taken as a colour image. When I go out on a Landscape shoot I have done my homework, studied the maps etc and have pre visualized ( The great Ansel Adams has to answer for this ) the final (b&w) image in my head. This is was not one of them as I find just converting from colour to B&W does not work the best. However this one does work and I have a few more sunrise, sunset images that started out as colour images.

Port Beach

While over on the east coast with Navan Camera Club a couple of weeks back for a Landscape Day Outing guess who forgot his tripod. Don't ask how I managed to leave the house without this vital piece of equipment for landscape photography. However it did  not spoil the day as I was more interested in teaching the new members of the club how to setup and compose their images. And because I had no tripod myself I got to go around to everyone and help them. On the Saturday we had some very cold dense fog I had every seen and was not looking good for Sunday. Like this is Ireland and the weather changes for day to day. The next day, Sunday, we had clear blue sky's and sunshine. What a contrast from Saturday. Mind you there was still a cold and frosty start to the day as you can see from the foreground in the above image. This image was taken on Port Beach looking north. You can see The Mourne Mountains in the clouds on the horizon. Wonderful side lighting makes the time image come alive in the foreground with parts in the shade as the sun was still very low in the sky. 

We travelled up the coast to some different locations. As I had not been to any of the locations before it was hit or miss with the conditions. I have been to Port Head on a number times and knew what to expect with the tide out. One of the main thing to do before you head out for Landscape photography is to know the tide times and sunrise, sunset times and positions  so that you are in the right spot at the right time. I had checked the time before hand so we got to Port Beach when the tide was at low tide. This gave us the max length of time on the beach. Again luck would have it that it was low tide again for the sunset and we made our way back here to finish of the day's shooting.

What The Duck

Gougane Barra Forest Park

Here is another images taken on the same day from the previous post form Gougane Barra Forest Park. This was taken further on the road in the Park. The River Lee which flows through Cork city and county starts life here (just outside the frame on the left). The sun was not high enough in the sky to cover the complete foreground and give the image very strong side lighting with the trees on the left compared to the right side. I also like the V shape made by the tops of the trees against the sky background.

In Action

This image was taken by Peter Cox when he was trying out my Canon G10. The image below (Gougane Barra post ) was the image i was taking at the time. The camera was at a angle so as to remove the lake from the froeground.

Gougane Barra

Gougane Barra Forest Park, what a location, near Ballingeary (R584) Co Cork.

Too start with that's the Moon in the image and not a dust spot. The image was taken very close to mid-day and the Moon was still visible with a bit of waiting so that it was clear of the clouds. We had lovely side lighting and wonderful cloud formations, perfect conditions for once. The camera was tilted upwards to remove the lake as there was nothing of interest for the foreground. We walked further up the road and came across a fence which you just make out on the bottom left of this image. I will post that image later to give you another viewpoint.

Glengarriff Bay

This image of Glengarriff Bay looking out towards Bantry Bay was taken on the second day from the South West Trip with Peter last week. The weather was changing all the time with sun one minute and clouds the next. We found a path down to the waters edge just before you drive into Glengarriff village. I took a lend of Peters Lee Polariser filter to bring out the details in the rocks under the water rock pool in the foreground. As always the ND Grad filters were in use with this image and you can take it as written that this filters is always used for all my landscape images so as to hold the details in the sky.

Back from Cork

Well I'm back now from my few days down with Peter Cox. I was staying with Peter in a place called Ballingeary, Co Cork. We had a couple of long days of shooting and interesting weather. However the final day was a wash out with rain, low clouds as the above image shows, but was still able to get a couple of images and this shows you don't have to have blue sky's and fluffy white clouds to capture a moody black and white photo. In this image you can just make out The Caha Mountain range on the Beara Peninsula taken from the Co Kerry side.
You can look forward to more images from this trip including Gougane Barra (what a wonderful place ), Glengarriff and Bantry Bay.

Viewpoints Trip

I will be off-line until next week as I am heading down south to Cork to meet up with Peter and Carsten for a few days shooting in South West Cork. Lets hope the weather will be kind and we get a couple of keepers. 

Mullaghmore Head

This image was taken on the far side of Mullaghmore Head looking out over Donegal Bay just before sunset. This was originally a colour print but decided to convert it to B&W using a different method than my usual Lightroom conversion. As this was already a high-res tiff file, I used Photoshop Channel Mixer with a overlay layer with some dodge and burn. I was some what surprised and pleased with the results. I will now have to got back to all my colour images I have of sunrise and sunset to see if any will look good this way. When I go out to shoot a location I have in my head the final b&w image I am looking for. I have found that just converting a colour image to b&w does not work the same way. However it has worked in this case so it may do so with other colour sunsets. I will keep you posted.

What The Duck

Another Donabte G10

Again another one from the same walk from Donabate Beach around the Headland towards Portrane. This is processed the same way as the previous post. Now I am hoping that Lightroom will be able to use the RAW files some time soon so that I can use my B&W conversion.

Donabate with G10

Well here is the first B&W image taken with the new Canon PowerShot G10 camera. I am very pleased with the results from this camera. However none of my programs can handle the RAW file format so this did not go thru my usual B&W Conversion Process in Lightroom etc...
I used Channel Mixer in Photoshop to do the conversion with Dodge and Burn tools.
The image was taken today while out for a walk on Donabate Beach. That would be Howth Head in the background on the horizon. I still like to use my filters and so I had to hand hold the ND grad filter in front of the lens while the image was taken. I think I will have to buy the Lens conversion kit and attach the filter system to this.
However this is just the second time out with the camera and while I did say in am email to a friend that I am selling all my 5D, 1D and lenses etc.. I will hold off for a little while yet. The results form this pocket camera are indeed wonderful, but a few more tests will have to be done. I got the camera for the reason it was used today and not to replace the DSLR's in the big backpack.............

B&W Rainbow ?

A black and white rainbow ?
I put this image up for one reason and that is to say "Bring your camera with you at all times".
I went for a walk around Skerries on Sunday afternoon after a very nice lunch with the family. The weather was sunny but a strong cold wind with rain, hence the rainbow. We took shelter in a doorway when it rained heavy. As we got back to the car park this wonderful rainbow appeared. Well talk about dropping everything and running. I managed to get a couple of shots before is disappeared. I was hand holding the camera as I forgot the tripod in the rush over to the shore line so that I got a clear view of the rainbow. It was funny to see other people taking photo's of the rainbow but they just stood in the carpark so they will have a forground full of cars (very nice). On the walk around Skerries I did manage to get a couple more images and will post them later.
I got my hand on a Canon G10 camera, so that I don't have to carry my 5D plus lens and tripod when I got out for walks. After reading the review on The Luminous Landscape website by Michaell Reichmann, I went and got one. I was looking at getting a compact camera for such a reason as my walking stick can be used as a monopod when you unscrew the top off. I will post image as soon as I can get out and shot with it.

Storm over Darty Mountains

This is another image from the last Viewpoints trip to north Mayo. We had driven up thru the Ox Mountains on our way to Sligo for sunset. We had lost Carsten some time back during the day but knew we would meet him in Mullaghmore. After a few shots down at Glencar Lake and Truskmore Mountain ( we drove up the mountain in Peters 4x4, I think that will be another post ) we stopped in Manorhamilton for dinner at the local Chip Shop. After dinner we headed out on the R280 towards the coast. Passing thru the valley at Glenade it started to get very dark as the clouds rolled in. We turned off the main road up a dirt track to get a better viewpoint when the sun came out and lit up the valley before us. By the time Peter got his large format camera set up I got the image we were looking for before the rain started again ( god bless the speed of digital setup ). The above image was the result "The Darty Mountains before the storm". We are heading down south, Co Cork for the next Viewpoints trip at the end of November.

What The Duck

Castlelough Bay

This image was taken while I was down in Killarney, Co Kerry. At the back of The Lake Hotel is a walk way out to a castle. This location is called Castlelough Bay on Lough Leane. The sun was very bright and high in the sky. With no Grad filters with me at I had to try and hide the sun. Lucky for me the tree branchs did the trick and also added a nice frame to the image. The mountains you see the the background are called Purple Mountain and Tomies Mountain. I don't clone anything out of my images as I don't agree with it, but in this case I might clone out the branch in the lower left corner because...... What do you think ?

What The Duck

Atlantic Drive

This has got to be my fav place to take landscape images, Achill Island. This image was taken on "The Atlantic Drive" around the island. That's Clare Island you see on the horzion in the background. I could spend hours, no days here but as always I have the family with me and only can stay a short while at this location. But you can come away with so many different images. I have gone to this spot many many times and have come back with different images all the time.

Easky Lough

This was taken on the last Viewpoint trip to North Mayo. However this images taken on the day we drove up through The Ox Mountains in Co. Silgo. We stopped a couple of times on this road and Easkey Lough was one such stop. What you have to do on this road is avoid the sheep because they are free the wonder around especially in front of your car. For this image I got down very low ( as far as my tripod would allow me ) to get the angle and position of the foreground grass. The clouds had started to break up and show some detail which helps. I don't really care about the technical details for my images as this is taken care of with the EXIF data, but I do always use the Lee 0.9 ND soft Grad filter attached to either my 24mm or 24-70mm lenses. So you can take it that all my images are shot this way with a aperture between f16 and f22. ( f8 or f11 on the 24mm tilt and shift lens ).

Port Beach

Went for  a drive over to the east coast around Drogheda to a place called Clogherhead. Actually this place is called Port Beach. You drive through Clogherhead village and then turn right at the church and follow the coast road sign.  After some very nice days of sunshine I had to pick today, dull and overcast,  to take some landscape images. The above image is one from today. You can just about make out The Mourne Mountains on the horizon. I think there is a great image to be had here from this location in the right conditions. I was at this location a good while back at 5 in the morning and have some wonderful images form sunrise with the sun, moon and the planet jupitor in the photo.

What The Duck

Mushrooms

While out for a day shooting some landscape images over on the east coast near Drogheda we can across a bunch of mushrooms at the side of the road on our way back home. I am sure the people in the cars who passed us by must have taught we were crazy. Grown men on the ground with cameras ? I changed the colour image using a infra-red effect in Lightroom. I like the way the head of the mushroom stands out from the rest of the image.

Tiger

This is one of my images from Dublin Zoo. This is of one of the three  Siberian Tigers at the Zoo. Early that morning the were feed some pigs head and chickens. I got some great images of them eating. When they were finished they have a rest and got to fill 2-3gigs worth os images as they just sat down and did not move. Shooting thru the glass can have major problems what with reflections and dirt, but because the light was coming in from the front of the enclosure this made for near perfect images ( no glass would be perfect but I would not be here to tell the tail ).  If you do go to Dublin Zoo you might see some images printed in their leaflets by Neil McShane, that's me as I supply Dublin Zoo with alot of  their photographs. As all the images are in colour I have posted none except of the odd one that I think looks good in B&W.

Turf Cutting's

This image was taken just beside the R251 road  in Co Donegal on a weekend trip with Navan Camera Club. The mountains in the background is Mt. Errigal.  This was the last image taken on the trip as we packed our cameras away and headed home. I took a few different images from this location looking west and turning around to the north and then east. I will post them later just to show you the range of images you  can get from standing in the same spot but just turning the camera around. The reason for this as you can see from this image we were standing in the bogg surrounded by cut turf.  I will have to make another visit some time soon back up here as we had no time to explore Glenveagh National Park.

What The Duck

The Canon 5D Mk2

My dreams have been answered with the arrival of the new 5D.

Follow the Link below to the 5d Mk2  website to see for yourself.

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/eosd/eos5dm2/index.html

DP Review already have a hands-on preview up on their site :

http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canoneos5dmarkII/

Is this new standard DSLR with the New 24mm F1.4L II Lens for landscape photographers.

Oh! no wait what about the 5D Mk2 with the new Carl Zeiss Distagon T 21mm f2.8 lens.

One form the Archive

Another one from the archive's and this time  I am going back a year or so. Not my usual wide open landscape images but one has to make do the the Irish weather sometimes. The was taken along the bank of the lower lake in Glendalough, Co Wicklow. Parking the car in the first car park you come to in the Park a path follows the bank of the Lower lake and end up down at the Upper lake. Overcast and rain, but still got a couple of images. For some reason I like this image. I am not going to go too deep into this image but I think its the relationship between the dead trees on the ground and the living one's standing up. Or maybe its just all the angle made by the trees. Anybody have their views on this one ? 

I bhFocas

Another good Friend and fellow Landscape Photographer Peter Cox was involved in a tv series for the Irish tv channel TG4.

Peter said :

"the work I've been doing for the TG4 series called 'I bhFocas' (In Focus). This will be a 6 part series starting in September . All of the episodes have been shot at this point, with only a couple of small segments still needing completion.
The programme is hosted by Sean O'Donaile and features a different guest every week. The guest chooses a series of locations that are important to them personally. At each location, a photograph is made and a photographic tip is passed on to the viewers. At the end of every programme, the guest is presented with a print from each location and gets to pick their favourite one.
While I am not seen on camera, I was heavily involved in the program's photographic content. Each week, I'll be putting the images from that episode online for you to look at in detail. I hope you enjoy the images and the show as much as I enjoyed making them!"

  

The first episode will air at 8pm on Thursday the 25th of September and at the same time on each subsequent Thursday for 6 weeks total.

And take a look at http://www.inferno.tv/broadcast/files/page8-1054-pop.html - it's the title sequence for the TV show.

Navan Camera Club

Last night, 15th Sept, was the opening night for the new season of Navan Camera Club. It was wonderful to see all the new and old faces. We had a packed room full of new members and lets hope I gave them some insight into the year ahead.

Click here to jump to the Navan Camera Club site.

Carsten New Blog

A good Friend and fellow Landscape Photographer Carsten Krieger has just started his own Blog at The Captured Light. With two books under his belt and new one in the pipeline his blog should be very interesting.  Here is a extract from the blog: 

"The month of August was not a good one for landscape photographers in Ireland. In fact the summer of 2008 was one of the wettest on record in Ireland and the UK.
And so was my trip to West Cork. The week brought a mixture of rain, drizzle and mist, followed by some heavy downpours. After that we had some more rain, drizzle and mist.
After my third morning waiting for some light but getting soaked instead I decided that it would be a good idea to get another day job. Anything indoors would be nice."

Good Luck Carsten and look forward to the new book.

PS: Let me know when its in the bookshops.

Derryveagh Mounatins

This is the start of the look back through my images I was talking about in the last post. This was taken back in May this year ( so not gone back too far to start with ) in a place called Dunlewy just off the road (R251) passed Mt. Errigal, Co Dunegal. Looking up the valley towards Slieve Snaght in the background. I made this a square crop of the image as I like the way the foreground rocks lead you up through the centre to the mountains in the background.  This effect does not work with the normal landscape type crop. It was a very dull overcast day and I don't think it stopped raining on/off the whole day hence the dark and moody clouds in the sky.

What The Duck

Old Stock

After a minor operation and short stay in hospital, I have a couple of week R&R from work. During this time I will going back thru all my old files to see how much if any I have improved ? Also it will be worth while to see if any locations require a re-visit with all this new knowledge aquired over the last few years and stored away upstairs.

Rinroe Point

On the north west point of Co Mayo is a village called Carrowteige which looks out over Broad Haven. From here turn left and head down to the coastline and you will come to this location, in the image above, Rinroe Point. After a morning visit to Downpatrick Head it was time to start the trip back home. However I went the long way (as you do) home by going further west and ended up in Ross Port. I could not go home after seen this landscape so more driving and map reading I ended up at Rinroe Point. I have a great colour image of just my car parked down by the beach. After a few hours it was time to make tracks for home.

MarathonFoto

I was away over in London at the weekend shooting the London Hydro 5K for MarathonFoto. 

"MarathonFoto provides great photos of individual achievements, while making life simple and dependable for event organizers and providing marketing support for their key sponsors.

A team of professional photographers takes multiple photos of event participants at several different locations on the course as well as at the finish for selected events."

I am now part of their European operations and will be covering events across europe, with the next event on the cards in Turin, Italy at the end of September and then the Dublin Marathon.

You can Link to their website from here to see the type of images taken all around the world.

What The Duck

Peoples Photography

Just back form a very enjoyable 2 day in Dublin at the Peoples Photography Exhibition.

"Peoples Photography is on Open Air Exhibition of Photography. It is open to all photographers, professionals and amateurs alike. Each exhibitor is allocated a section of the railings of St Stephens Green to mount their exhibition"

It was good to see some old friends again and to meet some new ones. This year I introduced some new image products. I printed some of my images upto 24 inchs wide for the exhibition and this turned out to be a great hit with the public and comments were all positive. So now I will have to add this onto my website sale area. I also had some of my colour sunrise/sunset images on display for the first time also.

Comments like this was the best black and white landscapes images see for year and they had the wow factor were great to hear. I also ran out of buz-cards to hand out to the public. With this I am hoping to see an increase of traffic on the website with the possibility of a few more sales.

Ruined in Ox Mts.

Not to be out done by Peter Cox and his "Ruined Cottage, Ox Mts.", here is a image taken in the Ox Mounatins from our last Viewpoints trip. We had finished shooting at Easky Lough and were driving north towards to coast when another ruined cottage was spotted by the road side. I got out this time (long story for another time and place) and took this image. I have not seen Peter's version of this cottage but you can look at another one he took a couple of hours before this one.

Glen Nephin

There is a mountain range in Co. Mayo called The Nephin Beg Range. The road out of the village Lahardaun leads you up through the Glen on a winding road until you come across a parking spot at the side of the road. All you have to do is walk about 10 steps into the field and this image above is the view you see. The mountain on the right is Nephin Mountain itself. It was taken in early evening time before i headed on up to Downpatrick Head for the sunset. Again this was taken on the last "Viewpoints" tour with Carsten Krieger and Peter Cox

Ashleam Bay

This is the image that is on the opening page of my Fine Art B&W website. It was taken on the last trip to Westport. I drove out to Achill Island and around the Alantic Drive coast road which goes aound the southern end of Achill Island. This bay is called Ashleam Bay and if you look on the right side of the image you can just see the road as it winds is way around. We were luckly with the weather this time but not like what we are having the the moment. I live in Ireland and have never seen so much rain this last few weeks.

Zebra

Is a Zebra Black with White strips or White with Black strips ?
This image was taken down in Foto Wildlife Park, Co Cork

The Conversion

For thoses who are interested here is the origional image (top) taken from the camera of The Rock of Cashel. It is just a jpeg version of the RAW file from Lightroom and the B&W conversion (bottom) from Lighroom using a Desaturation method to converting. The final image after the layer mask and dodging/burning in Photoshop can be seen below.

The Rock

Well the weather was worse than I hoped to expected down in Cork. I had only one good day and that was the drive down to Cork. I stopped in Cashel , Co Tipperary for a bit of lunch and to get a photo of "The Rock of Cashel". This is not your usual image of the famous place but a viewpoint I came across a while back but with no tripod I made it a point to return again. This is one of a couple of images taken that will make up onto the website for sale (www.blackandwhite.ie get the plug-in). What interests me about this image is the angle and lines of the wall and the hill.

Storm & Mountain

I am now off to Cork for a short break and lets hope I will return with a couple of new images. I have not being down to Cork for a good while now so this will be interesting. It will more than likely be a recon- trip for further trips. So here is one to keep you going until my return. It's a very dark and dramatic image from the The Mourne Mountains, Co Down. I think we got back to the cars just before the rain came down and boy did it rain.

Downpatrick 2

Here is another image form the very productive trip to Downpatrick. If you look closely you can see a wave breaking on the rocks. The very same rock you see in the post below. For thoses who do not know where Downpatrick Head is I have added a Link here.

Downpatrick Head

This image was taken back in April of this year at about 7 in the evening while we were waiting for the sunset. I thing I have a whole sequence of different images from Downpatrick Head with the different rock formations along the shoreline. You can walk around here all day and not one image would be the same. I was luckly in this one to have caught a wave coming in over the rocks which adds a little action or distraction to the image. Your comments please. I may post some more images from Downpatrick but they will be uploaded to the Gallery section on my website: www.blackandwhite.ie

Courtmacsherry Bay

While down in Cork at the June Bank Holiday Weekend I went for a spin around the Old Head of Kinsale. It was in the late afternoon so I had to wait for a good few hours until the sunset. It was a wonderfull day and the beach was packed with people. One by one they started to pack up and leave and by 9:30 there was nobody left on the beach to walk in front of the camera. What I like about this image is the rock formations in the foreground and the rays of ligth in the clouds details. The location for the image was the beach just before Lispatrick on the R604 looking out over Courtmacsherry Bay, Co. Cork.

Glencar Lough

Here is a funny one for you to comment on and explain the effect on the sun.
It's an image taken in the afternoon on Glencar Lough with King's Mountain on the right. I think I had 3 ND Grad filters on the lens (0.9 +0.6 +0.3) and this might account for the effects but how ?

What The Duck