Donncha

A colourful sunrise

It was one of those mornings where the sun shone on the clouds from below the horizon and filled the sky with fiery colours!

I’ve been working on a WordPress plugin called Cloud Cover Forecast. It will show you the low, mid, and high clouds for a particular location in a block on your site. It’s inspired by Clear Outside. If you have a blog, take it for a whirl and let me know if it works for you! It’s not on WordPress.org yet, so you’ll have to install it manually by uploading the zip file.

Aperture	ƒ/8
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	41mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/100s

The Passage West to Monkstown Run

Black and white photograph of young man on small bicycle riding along curved road from Passage West to Monkstown in Co Cork, with footpath, street lamps, dense woodland, and rolling hills in background

The bike might be a little small but it got him to Monkstown in the end, I hope.

Aperture	ƒ/5.6
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	55mm
ISO	100
Shutter speed	1/25s

Mahon’s Radio Tower

View across water of telecommunications tower on grassy hillside surrounded by mature trees in Mahon, Cork, with stone seawall and rocky shoreline in foreground under clear blue sky

Twenty two years separate the two images here. The first one is a photo of the old radio antenna tower in Mahon and it was taken in 2003. Back then cattle grazed in the field the tower stood in. That tower was dismantled around a year ago. There’s an interesting Reddit thread here about it. The second photo was from earlier this year where a smaller tower with familiar equipment for what is probably mobile phone cell reception.

It’s an old AM / Medium Wave radio tower that used to carry RTE Radio Cork / Radio 1 and at one stage even a relay of 2FM on medium wave, for those who liked their music crackly. It hasn’t been on air rather a long time an I think RTE has a number of transmitters being demolished. They’re doing it as a single contract.

As far as I’m aware that site was decommissioned in the early 2000s, before RTE finally switched off the main Medium Wave (AM) site in Tullamore. The transmitter itself is long gone. All that’s there is the mast.

There’s no prospect of that mast ever being used again.

Old AM sites typically use the whole structure of the antenna as the transmitter. They often sat on an isolated base and the tower height is half the wave length. So you can’t even easily retune them for an alternate AM frequency and they’re relatively useless for mobile phone gear as they are somewhat flexible and move in the wind.

Basically it would cost RTE a fortune to maintain it, even if it’s a local landmark. They’re not going to pay for ongoing maintenance and they’re quite complicated structures with guy-wires and aircraft hazard lighting and all that stuff.

Aperture	ƒ/4.8
Camera	FinePix2800ZOOM
Focal length	22.4mm
ISO	100
Shutter speed	1/550s

From the Heart of Spain

La Mariblanca, a statue in a large square in Madrid, marks the geographic centre of Spain.

This is what it looked like in 2017, but the area around it has been developed since then and now there’s more places to stop and sit.

Aperture	ƒ/8
Camera	Canon EOS 6D
Focal length	24mm
ISO	100
Shutter speed	1/800s

The Working End of Gardening

Weathered orange metal storage cabinet or locker with chrome handle standing among coiled black hoses and red plastic chairs at Ballincollig Regional Park allotments, showing rust and wear from outdoor use.

The allotments next to Ballincollig Regional Park need storage for various things, but I doubt the cabinet in the photo above is used for much any more.

Videos I watched recently

Aperture	ƒ/9
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	62mm
ISO	500
Shutter speed	1/160s

Window on the City

From the car park on North Main Street, Cork, you can Bruce College and St Mary’s Dominican Priory. I liked how the stark lifeless concrete frame of the multi-story car park contrasted with the variety of materials and colours in the world outside.

Aperture	ƒ/6.3
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	201mm
ISO	1000
Shutter speed	1/1000s

Another One Bites the Crust

Meet London’s most successful entrepreneur. This seagull has cornered the market on prime real estate with a view. Perched on the Millennium Bridge like it owns the place, this feathered opportunist represents everything brilliant about urban wildlife adaptation. While Freddie Mercury sang about another one biting the dust, this gull’s motto is clearly “another one bites the crust”, and judging by its confident posture, business is booming.

From this vantage point, our avian overlord can survey the entire pedestrian buffet streaming across the bridge below. Dropped sandwiches, abandoned chips, and tourist snacks are all fair game in the urban food chain. Those gleaming towers in the background might house London’s financial elite, but this bird has figured out a more direct route to success: position yourself where the food comes to you.

Aperture	ƒ/9
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	122mm
ISO	160
Shutter speed	1/500s

Carey’s Lane After Dark

I was out with Blarney Photography Club during the summer and one member of the club kneeled to photograph Carey’s Lane. I went high and lifted my camera over my head to get it from a different perspective!

Carey’s Lane is one of Cork’s oldest medieval streets, originally part of the walled city that dates back to the 12th century. The narrow width and cobblestone surface are remnants of medieval urban planning, designed for foot traffic and horse-drawn carts. The modern drainage channel follows the same path that medieval gutters would have taken, showing how some aspects of urban infrastructure remain remarkably consistent across centuries.

Aperture	ƒ/3.5
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	24mm
ISO	1600
Shutter speed	1/500s

Roses on Westminster Bridge

Westminster Bridge is one of those places that is always bustling with tourists. It is so busy.

Westminster Bridge is one of the few locations in central London where street vendors can legally operate without special permits for certain goods, thanks to historic trading rights that date back centuries. However, flower sellers must still navigate complex licensing requirements, and the competition for prime spots along the bridge is fierce, with established vendors often working the same locations for years.

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	24mm
ISO	125
Shutter speed	1/500s

A Little Privacy

When there’s CCTV everywhere and you just want a little privacy to check your phone, you have to hide from the cameras.

Aperture	ƒ/6.3
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	160mm
ISO	1000
Shutter speed	1/500s

The Flying Train

When you can take the train, you should probably take it rather than flying.

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	ILCE-7M3
Focal length	17mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/5s

Ballycotton’s Beacon on the Island

The lighthouse on the island just off the coast by Ballycotton is always a nice subject for a photo. The night we were there, we hoped to photograph the moon rising behind the lighthouse but a large bank of cloud covered the horizon.

Aperture	ƒ/8
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	124mm
ISO	1600
Shutter speed	1/250s