What a Week?

Here is your Monochrome Maniacs image.

A face only a mother could love?

Well you might have gathered that there has been no posts on Mononeil for a while now. I have a good reason. The image above is the reason. Here is the story :

I don't do People photography and I don't display images of my family on the web, but this time I have. This is my 6 year old son Craig with ice cream all over his face and minus his two front teeth. And that the problem, his missing front teeth.

While out playing with the other children a couple of weeks ago now, he was kicked in the face with the result of his front teeth coming loose. No problems we though, his baby teeth, just let them fall out normally. After a couple of days they were still hanging on and starting the cause him problems eating. So we went down to the local dental hospital. After a short operation he was minus his front teeth, the ability to talk, eat, and swallow.

We gave it a good few hours for the anesthetic effects to go but he was still the same and getting worse. The next day he was still the same not talking, swallowing and eating. We got him to the doctors and they did not understand what was wrong with him. Now I'm worried. Back into the car and drove to the hospital ( within the speed limits Mr Policeman, not ).

To cut a long story short, he had a reaction the the anesthetic. Also after the numbness, his brain did not understand what had happened in his mouth. I stayed in the hospital with him to try and teach him how to use his tongue again.

All is well now and I am playing catch up with my commercial work, blog and printing my images for the Peoples Photography Exhibition this coming weekend.

Art or Mistake ?

Here is your My World image.

Well is it Art or Mistake ?

You can decide the correct answer.

To me it was a big mistake. The modern camera and auto focus.
The story goes like this : On my camera I separate the shutter button from the auto focus controls so the a press of the AF button on the back of the camera will do the focus. So I decide on the composition, select my point of focus then move the camera into the final position and lock down the tripod controls. Simple right ? Now all I have to do is press the shutter button to take the photo.

Not for the 10 or so images, one of which is above. What happened here was the the camera's controls were put back into default mode so to speak. Shutter button does exposure and focus. In the image above I focused on the wonderful lights on the sea front amusement in Bundoran and then composed the scene. When I pressed the shutter button the camera went hunting for a focus point some were in the sky and gave up by the look of things. Now I have 10 image with out of focus lights from Bundoran.

The lesson to learn for this wonderful piece of 'Art' is : Always change your camera back to YOUR default setting. In my case I did not change my camera back to what I would call Landscape Mode as I am a landscape photographer. The camera ( Canon 5D )was used for something else before I went away on this trip and I did not change it back again.

In my defence : it was very late after a long day, very dark down on the beach. I don't like changing lens near sand. The image does not work that well in b&W anyway etc............
That's why I love the Canon Eos 1D series cameras so much as you can set all the modes up a specific way and save that in your My Menu Settings. I have Sports, Wildlife and Landscape saved here so with the press of one button the camera is set up ready for action. And that's not the best part. You can save these setting onto a CF card and load them into another camera.

That's My World for today.

Bunduff Lough

Here is your Monochrome Maniacs image.

First up for you this week is an image of Bunduff Lought with Benbulbin and Tievebaun Mountains in the background.

The funny thing is that this was a image I can across will out very early one morning. I was over on the other side of Mullaghmore Head for a sunrise image on the coast ( more of this during the week ). Where I saw standing the light and clouds were not right for me. However I could see that the cloud front had broken up and the sunrise was shinning through to my left. A pack up and into the car and try and find a suitable location.

After a while and a couple of u-turns ( not a problem at 6 in the morning ) I can across this lake. All the conditions were right with the added bonus of the reflections of the clouds in the still lake. Benbulbin Mountains (on the right) had it's top covered with some low clouds while Tievebaun Mountain was lit up with the sunrise.

In the end I was very pleased with the mornings work even if the image I was after did not happen, this one made up for it. There will always be another day, and in my case a few more sunrises to come.

As I said in the last post I will be posting some of the mistake made over this trip and lets hope you will learn something from them. Tomorrow will be the first of them, so stayed tuned.

I'm back from holidays.

Well I'm back from my holidays/work in Donegal. Weather was great, children enjoyed the surfing and I got to get up at 4 in the morning again. At time it was worth it as the light was wonderful.

What I have I got in store for you over the coming weeks?
More form Antrim and my latest trip to Donegal. Who is willing to show their mistakes online? I have a few classics to show you. We all make mistakes but it's what we learn from them that matters.