Canon 20D – Page 59 – In Photos dot Org

Your mom knows kung fuu

I’ve been bursting to tell everyone for the last few months that in 2007 I will become a father!

Jacinta, my wife, is pregnant and she’s due in the middle of April! We’re very excited about it but also nervous. We don’t want to know or care if the baby is a boy or a girl. A healthy baby is all we want. Guys – look out for the book, “A bloke’s guide to pregnancy”. It’s a great read, very entertaining and will explain a bit about what to expect and what’s going in your partner’s body! Now you know why I was more than a little interested in who was pregnant on Today FM!

Don’t be surprised if my blogging slows down a little bit around April, but I will try and have about 2 months of photos ready to be posted for late April and on to May. Hopefully things may quieten down and get into a routine after that.

And now I can reveal the only event that marred what was a great year in 2006. The main reason I didn’t attend the Irish Blog Awards last year was because Jacinta was pregnant at the time and the pregnancy wasn’t going so well. Unfortunately, she had a miscarriage soon after.
I find that miscarriage is a taboo subject to talk about. Very few bloggers will talk about it even though 1 in 4 pregnancies will probably not go full-term. Maybe it’s superstition and considered tempting fate to even bring the subject up. Whatever the reason, it’s an awful tragedy for expectant parents to go through.

Happy new year!

Aperture	ƒ/8
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/125s

City Hall at night

City Hall at night

Cork City Hall at night as viewed from across the river. It was all lit up for the Modern Homes Exhibition and as it was such a calm night the reflection on the River Lee was beautiful.

If you watch the RTE news at 6pm or 9pm tonight, watch out for the photo on the weather forecast. A friend of mine, Catherine Cotter, sent in a few entries to their photography competition and one of her photos will be shown tonight! I must set up the Sky+ to record it just in case. I might be able to get a screen capture somehow!

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	100
Shutter speed	4s

Standing in the gutter

Standing in the gutter

It’s pouring rain, I’m just after eating a delicious meal with family and what do I do? Go shoot the leaves in the drain across the road.

I can tell you it was difficult enough holding the umbrella in one hand, camera in the other, thinking about composition and keeping my balance, without getting wet. *Phew*

Shot in Blarney on a very wet day.

Aperture	ƒ/7.1
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	1600
Shutter speed	1/100s

Brooding sky at sunset

Brooding sky at sunset

A brooding, dark sky threatens to swallow the setting sun over Drake’s Pool near Crosshaven in Co. Cork.

Aperture	ƒ/8
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/160s

Enjoy diet Coke

Enjoy diet Coke

A sign blazes it’s message above our heads in San Francisco. The Diet Coke logo could be seen from the end of the street so I had to snap it as we got closer!

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/40s

Dog in a lampshade

Dog in a lampshade

Poor Oscar. It’s not bad enough that he got the snip but he had to wear what looks to all the world like a lampshade for two weeks. This was only a week after he moved in with us last Summer and the poor fella was not impressed.

Thankfully he got over it remarkably quickly and doesn’t have an aversion to lighting fixtures as we suspected he might have.

Our Oscar is quite a needy little character. He loves human attention. This faq on Shih Tzus is quite good, although it does contradict an earlier page I read that said they are a one human dog. Oscar definitely prefers Jacinta to me, but he goes crazy when he sees me after an absence too!

He sleeps in the kitchen and up to recently we kept the door closed to stop him coming upstairs but unfortunately he has the door half-ruined from scratching and his whining and barking kept us awake many times.
The solution? Train him and be more strict. He’s not allowed upstairs now and I leave the kitchen door open at night. No scratching, no whining. Sometimes he sneaks upstairs and we find him curled up on the landing but a quick and sharp, “Oscar! Get down!” and he’s scurrying down to his bed again.

So, it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks. Well, a middle-aged one at any rate.

Aperture	ƒ/5
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/50s

The River, The Brewery and the Cathedral

The River, The Brewery and the Cathedral

The River Lee rushes by the Beamish and Crawford Brewery on one side, and O’Sullivan Electrical on the other with St. Finbarre’s Cathedral in the background.

I have discovered there’s a dead pixel on my camera’s sensor. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to show itself much but when I take long exposure shots like the one above a little red dot appears in the top-right of the image. It’s easy to get rid of with the clone tool but also annoying.

The Wacom graphics tablet is great fun to play with but I haven’t got it working fully in Linux yet. Ubuntu thinks it’s simply another mouse device and GIMP doesn’t see it as an “extended device”. I spent quite some time on the Ubuntu forums trying to fix it yesterday before giving up and trying it out on a few images.
It’s a little fiddly to begin with, but I think that’s par-for-the-course when using a new tool. I do find that when dodging and burning large sections of images the brush can get stuck and won’t follow the cursor but I’ve read that once it’s properly configured performance is improved so I hope that is fixed then.

Hope you had a nice Christmas Day!

Aperture	ƒ/11
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	8s

Jesus Christ Loves You

Jesus Christ Loves You

A man stands alone amid the bustle of downtown San Francisco holding a sign proclaiming the message, “Jesus Christ Loves You”.

This photo brings to mind the preacher in Chicago I photographed while on holiday there. I wonder if the man in San Francisco has the same colourful history.

Happy Christmas to all, I hope you’re having a great day!

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

Last minute shopping

Last minute shopping

Today many major cities and towns around the world are going to be thronged with shoppers doing last minute shopping before Christmas Day. Traffic is going to crawl and frustrate and the crowds will be suffocating.

I’m glad I’m staying at home. We may head out to the Lough later for a walk. So stressful!

I like this: Europe – The Parisian Chapter

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	800
Shutter speed	1/800s

Take the GoCar around San Francisco

Take the GoCar around San Francisco

Matt Rudd took the GoCar around San Francisco and I remembered seeing one on my travels there last August!

Sixteen miles per hour and I’m absolutely terrified. You wouldn’t think a grown man could be terrified at such low speeds, but it’s because I’m being chased up one of those Steve McQueen hills by a tram. Unlike Steve McQueen, I’m not in a Ford Mustang. If I were, it wouldn’t be a problem, would it? But instead of the Mustang, I’m in a bright yellow buggy with a top speed of 40mph. That’s 40mph if you threw it off a cliff. Top speed up a San Franciscan hill seems to be 16mph. Sorry, 15mph. No… 13, 11, 9?

Aperture	ƒ/11
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/250s

Fun at the crib

Fun at the crib

Fr James McSweeney’s live crib in Ballyvolane was busy with animals and human visitors all through last week but I managed to get some shots the night when we visited.

As I mentioned already, there were all sorts of animals there, from sheep and donkeys to chickens, calves and puppies. Donations are welcome, and all proceeds go towards the renovation of St. Patrick’s Church. The crib last year raised 35,000 Euro for the Cope Foundation so hopefully they can beat that this year!

The crib is open from 5pm to 9pm until the 23rd, so if you’re in the area, call up to Ballyvolane Church and you’ll see the signs pointing the way to the crib.

I like this: Edward Scissorhands – my wife is a huge fan of the film. I wonder how long it took to get the model looking like that?

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	21mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/60s

An Fear Marbh

An Fear Marbh

An Fear Marbh, an island off the coast of Co. Kerry, Ireland, with the setting sun lighting up the cloud over the Atlantic.

“An Fear Marbh” translates as “the dead man” and is so named because of the obvious shape of the island – that of a man lying on his back.
This was taken last September but because today is the Winter Solstice, and the shortest day of the year, I thought it was the perfect image for the day. Days will get longer now, little by little each day.

On the day this was taken we had dinner in Dingle. I watched the sun set and the light travel down the mountains near the Conor Pass. After eating, we quickly drove west to the coast to watch the sunset. Driving down a small road we spotted a car pulled over and someone standing outside watching the sunset so we stopped and got out. Turns out it was another photographer shooting the setting sun! We stayed there chatting for a few minutes before heading off. A few moments later the road turned a corner and this beautiful scene presented itself. I had to stop and shoot a few dozen shots.

Last night we called to the crib in Ballyvolane. Fr. James McSweeney has put together a wonderful crib with chickens, pigs, calves, goats, sheep, lammas, a pony, 2 donkeys and 4 young puppies. I’ll post a photo or two tomorrow, and the crib is definitely worth a visit if you live in Cork.
Visitors are asked to give a donation, and this year money raised will go to the St Patrick’s Church renovation fund. The crib is located 200 metres from St Oliver’s Church in Ballyvolane on Kilmorna Heights.
Fr. James has a photography site at Today is my gift to you.ie where he posts a new photo every day. I’ll be converting it to a WordPress blog in January when things quieten down again!

Aperture	ƒ/9
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	106mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/5s