Skerries Today

Here is your Monochrome Maniac image.

It's been a good while since I have taken any black and white landscapes of late. Too busy, a good complaint in these troubled times. You get to a point where you don't care any more. I have reach and passed that point now.

Back to photography. This image was taken today over on the east coast in a place called Skerries. We went for a walk around the village and beach area. I managed to slip away from the family with my camera and tripod. How did they get into the car? It's a mystery. Traveling very light, camera, 24mm tilt&shift lens and cable release. I managed to get a couple of images around the shoreline from Red Island. Red island is what they called the land around by the harbour. In the image above you can also see Colt Island.

This was a straight shot ie none of my usual grad filters. Processed using DXo Optics and dodge and burn in Photoshop.

What's in store for me this week coming:

Monday sees me heading down to Dublin Zoo for the Launch of the book on the history of the Zoo. Many of my photos are included. Tuesday is the opening night of the "Art of Photography" course I am teaching for the next 8 weeks. Wednesday is the opening night of "Digital Photography for Beginners". Another 8 week course I am teaching. I think I will bring a photo of my family with me as I don't think I will be seeing much of them. ( Good or Bad ? ).

Hope you have a good week and drop by during the week to see more B&W Landscapes.

Bundoran Sunset

Here is your Skywatch image.

It's being a week since my last post. I can't believe that week has flown by. I was away in Turin last weekend shooting a Marathon. I'm also putting the finishing touches to two adult education night course on "The Art of Photography" and "Digital Photography for Beginners". After buying a 500mm lens it's still in the box and have not got the chance to use it yet.

Enough of that, the above image was taken from my last family holiday in Bundoran this year. The great thing about this location is that the hotel we were staying in was just to the right of the cliffs in the shot. So a simple was out the car park and bingo here you are. But the down side as I was saying in the last post it's too close to the hotel and you will get a fair amount of people out walking on the beach. ( Oh if I had a shotgun !!!!! ).

Again with shooting into the setting sun, the exposure can be very hard to get right so that the highlights are not blown out too much. In this image I was able to control them just right with the help of my ND Grad filters. The tide was also right so that the foreground rock helped the composition.

Have a good weekend and see you next week with a couple of more post I promise. 

Dunluce Castle

Here is your SkyWatch image.

This is another one of the famous visitor attractions on the Antrim Coast, Dunluce Castle. It's located between The Giant's Causeway and Portrush. Usually to get to this viewpoint you have to climb down the cliffs on the left side ( out of view in this image ). However on this occasion we had an easy walk down a man made wooden walkway. Hence the reason it's not in the above image. We were blessed with the weather and a low tide also. It was tricky to get the exposure right as the foreground rocks were in shadow and the sky was very bright. Using a couple of ND Grad filters and some dodge&burn I was able to balance the image nicely ??

Once again we had to work fast. Why ? The plague of all landscape photographers, the wandering tourist who just walks into the frame and stays there. Because of the walk way it was easy fro people to get down here and we had two families with children to content with this time. We should bring in a law so that photographers can shoot tourists ( and not with a camera ).

In the mean time have a good weekend and see you here next week.

Tiger Cubs & Mother

Here is your Monochrome Maniacs image.

I made a quick visit to Dublin Zoo today too see how the Tiger Cubs are doing. They have doubled in size and weight since I last photographed them. Not the best conditions for photography. Clear blue sky, very sunny and loads of shadows. The above image shows the Tiger cubs with their mother. 

I am planning a 7:00 start new weekend to get full access to the Tigers before the Zoo opens as this is the best time to get an image of them all together 

Mullahgmore Sunset

Here is your SkyWatch Friday image.

Another classic Sunset in Black & White.!!!

While on a photo trip in Co Mayo I headed up towards Co Sligo for sunset. And what better location than Mullaghmore. The exposure difference between the foreground rock and the sky was so great two ND Grad filters had to be used ( Lee 0.9 and 0.6 ). I know some of you would say "bracket and hdr". No thanks. I take each image as it was my last frame on a roll of film and try to get the image as near to perfect in the camera. But as they say and I say it's the final image that counts not the way got there.

Enjoy the weekend and see you next week.

Lake Ramor

Here is your Watery Wednesday image.

Jumping back a couple of years for this image. What I can remember, this image was taken on a cold winters morning. The mist was lifting off the water as the sun was starting to shine through  the clouds.  I was testing out a camera the Canon 400d / Rebel XTi with the kit lens. I don't think I would be happy to enlarge the image above 10x8 as you will start to see the softness around the edges. However with the L series glass on the camera it was OK.  It just proves the point I have being telling my students how want to upgrade their camera to the latest model. Invest in the glass (ie Lens) if you want to improve your photography. I can safely say that you have only used between 20-50% of the functions of your camera. 

Larrybane

Here is your Monochrome Maniac image.

As I have said before I don't display images of my family. I also don't take portrait landscapes as in the above image. I did for this image however. It was taken went I was up on the Antrim coast a while back now. The location is called Larrybane. The two major visitor locations on this coast would be The Giants Causeway and The Carrick-a-Rede Rope bridge. Larrybane is the location of the rope bridge. When we arrived here the car park was completely full of visitors fro the rope bridge. I had mentioned to Peter about this spot, so we drove passed the car park and down the path towards the over overflow car park. We had the place to ourself. A short walk down towards the water edge and you have a wonderful view of the Larrybane Cliffs and the Rope Bridge.  The above is the view you have as you walk down the path towards the bottom of the cliffs. You can see Rathlin Island on the horizon and using a Polariser the sky has turned black. 

When I am out taking Landscape images I visualize them in the Landscape format not this portrait format and find it very hard to like any image in this format. Have you any thoughts on this? I will post the Landscape version and we can compare the images with a quick poll to find out which you like best.

Bundoran Sunset

Here is your SkyWatch image.

It's being a while since the last time I put up an image on Sky Watch Friday. No particular reason, just the way thinks have worked out and not having the time to sit down and go through the images from the last couple of trips.
The above image is from my last photo trip away to Bundoran, Co. Donegal back in August. Taken after sunset down on the beach. The tide was out which made the foreground a bit more interesting with the pools of water and reflections on the wet sand. The clouds look blurred that's because the shutter was open for 30sec.
No mistakes were used in the making of this image as it's from the same location as the "Art or Mistake" post.
You can also see another sunset from Bundoran taken a good few years back in this post: Link Here.

People's Photography

The above image shows my display for The Peoples Photography open air Exhibition around the railings of St Stephens Green in Dublin over the weekend.

Over the two days, I sold a few images but the main reason was handing out the business cards to get the name out. In the end I handed out nearly 250 business cards.
I received great reactions to my work which was great to hear. Following on from this I received a couple of requests for my Monochrome Magic Workshops and a marketing company are interested in using one of my images for a ad campaign.
Also I was beside my good friend and fellow pro Peter Cox, and we had an enjoyable and productive couple of days.

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.