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 ?