Shih Tzu playing ball on the beach

Our pet Shih Tzu, Oscar with a tennis ball in his mouth on Garrettstown Beach a few weeks before Adam was born last April.
He loves running after the ball, but the poor little doggy is a bit lame right now. We took him to the vet who couldn’t find anything wrong. This has happened before and he recovered so fingers crossed he gets better this time too.
The strange thing is, it only affects him when he’s walking on pavements or roads. On grass he’s almost fine, and at home you wouldn’t know it from his running around! Dog psychology?

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 225mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/1250s

A child playing in the sand

This little girl was playing in the sand on the beach as we walked past. Plenty of toys about, but I don’t think she had built a sand castle yet. It’s lovely to see children playing in the sand. It’s an age of innocence and (sometimes) simple joy that we forget as adults.

A few weeks before Adam was born we went down to Garrettstown Beach in Co. Cork. The sun was shining, it was warm and the beach had a good number of people on it. Beautiful day!

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 265mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/1000s

California Sunset

On the way to the Automattic beach houses last night we drove along the famous road that featured in Basic Instinct. I opened the window on Toni’s car and took a few photos of the sunset. I hoped for it to happen, but I was very lucky that the sun was blocked out by the signpost.

What are we doing on day one? Robert Hoekman, Jr is talking to us about "Designing the obvious" and expanding on his talk from the first day at WordCamp. The talk is going great, and generating lots of chatter and ideas!

Aperture ƒ/16
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 21mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/500s

Beach in the evening

Inch Strand in Co. Kerry as the sun shines over the water and the tide comes in.

Aperture ƒ/20
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 72mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/1000s

G-BKSP on Inch Strand

Another shot from our few hours at Inch Strand in Co. Kerry last September. This is G-BKSP waiting on the beach to fly. Unlike the glider I posted earlier I saw this plane fly. Unfortunately conditions weren’t suitable for flying the gliders before we had to head home to Cork.

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/800s

Lifebelt in the grass

A lifebelt lay in the grass at a beach on the Dingle Peninsula, Co. Kerry last September. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, beautiful clouds contrasted with the deep blue of the sky and a light breeze blew off the sea.

We were just going back to the car after a nice stroll on the beach. I had just taken footprints in the sand down on the beach when I looked back one more time and saw this striking scene in front of me.

The clouds were perfect, the sun was shining on the beach, the far away hills were in shadow and light. Perfect moment!

Aperture ƒ/13
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/400s

EI-128 ready to fly

Here’s another shot of EI-128. Following my last shot I moved to the other side of the glider to capture some of the beach and hills behind.

This was originally shot at an angle to get as much vertical space in but I rotated the image and filled in the sand and background as well as I was able. Sand is usually quite easy to fill in because it’s so uniform but there was a gradient of shade according to how damp it was that made things harder.

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/400s

EI-128 on Inch Strand

Last September a large group of glider enthusiasts spent a weekend at Inch Strand in Co. Kerry. They were from two clubs, one in Dublin and one from further north I think. I took down their details but that scrap of paper is long lost at this stage.

Conditions weren’t the best on the day we passed the beach. It was a beautiful sunny day, but the wind wasn’t blowing in the right direction and the only aircraft I saw flying was a powered one. We were on our way home so couldn’t wait around unfortunately. I still got some nice shots. Hopefully I’ll find time to work on them over the next few weeks!

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/250s

Kilbrittain 6 miles

A sign points to Kilbrittain in Co. Cork near the beach at Garrettstown.

Has it been 2 years already Ryan? My Flickr account expires in February 2008 so I have a bit more time on my hands. It’s been well worth it however!

Aperture ƒ/14
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/400s

Waves crash at Garretstown

Waves crash onto the beach at Garretstown last April.

Ryan has put his photos of the Irish Blog Awards online. Great shots!

Aperture ƒ/10
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 200mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/400s

Rusted, old and bent

This is part of another pillar near the one pictured yesterday but in much worse condition.

I love the textures and the way that rust practically flows down. It’s a shame I didn’t get everything in focus though.

I figured out why my posts started showing “This photo is currently unavailable”. On March 1st Flickr changed the way they name their images. Previously it was only a matter of changing _m.jpg to _o.jpg to get the original image, or swapping in “_s.jpg” to get a small thumbnail. Now the numbers in the filename change as well.

It’s a simple but tedious task to change the image before I publish a post but the thumbnails you see at the top of this page are generated by a small script which now needs to be rewritten and made a lot smarter.

Aperture ƒ/10
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 88mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/250s

The soaking wet happy springer spaniel

This is another photo of Ruby, a springer spaniel that lives in Myrtleville. This time she followed us over to Fennell’s Bay where she dashed off into the shallows after stones. She was deliriously happy!

Unfortunately the same could not be said for a group of teenagers higher up on the beach who threw stones at us and into the water very close to us. Their malevolent laughter spoiled that moment for us and put us in real danger. They weren’t locals and by their accents it wasn’t hard to figure out where in Cork they were from.

There’s more of Ruby here and here. We were down in Myrtleville last weekend and didn’t see her at all. I hope she’s ok and was tucked up at home in front of the fire instead of at a cold and wet beach.

Congratulations to Gavin@Headphoneland for winning best photoblog at last night’s Irish Blog Awards! Get well soon!

There’s definitely something up with Flickr’s “Blog This” function. The URL of the image it passed to my blog was borked and displayed the infamous, “This photo is currently unavailable”. I reported it yesterday but I guess it’ll take longer than that to fix.

The ever vexxing question of privacy arrises on Kevin’s blog here and here. In the USA it’s perfectly ok to use someone’s image for non commercial usage as long as the photo was taken in a public place. I can understand why that woman is suing Yahoo! but I guess it’s the money she wants rather than protecting her privacy. (Is there a difference?) I covered the issue in the past, where things could be a little different in Ireland – the expectation of privacy extends to a private conversation in a public place. Vexxing indeed!

The Digital Photography Show interviewed Bert Krages, the author of the PDF, The Photographer’s Right on the subject of photographer’s rights. I haven’t listened yet but it should be good as he knows his stuff. Obviously laws will change from place to place so do some research locally before shooting on the street! The interview is also mentioned here and here.

Aperture ƒ/7.1
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/125s