The Worldwide Photowalkers

41 had signed up but some couldn’t make it unfortunately. In the end, a more manageable 23 turned up. Here’s most of us as pictured afterwards in The Old Oak bar where we went for drinks and sandwiches.

I had a great time today, I think everyone else did too by their reactions. The day didn’t go quite as I had planned. We met at the GPO at 2pm, waited a few minutes for stragglers and then just because it started to rain we headed to The English Market.

Half an hour or so there and people were making comments about the number of cameras so we walked up Oliver Plunkett Street and found the Globalfest Festival in full swing in Bishop Lucey Park!

It was great to walk through the park, the rain kept off, a stage play provided plenty of shots, and other activities and people did too. Off through the side gate and just as we got on to Tuckey Street, the heavens opened and rain poured down. Luckily the awning in front of Tribes was down. Good cover for all of us!

As the rain let up we headed towards the Grand Parade again, on the way to The Clarion for the end of the Lee Swim. We stopped at Nano Nagle Bridge to shoot the local scenery and then at the Peace Park (they’ve done a great job on that, much more open and visible than it was), and then off down South Mall.

The Lee Swim had started at 3pm, it was 3:35pm now and my brother Donal rang to say the swimmers would be on the home stretch now. I walked a little faster.

We got to the Clarion to find the last few dozen swimmers hitting home. The final swimmer was visibly suffering, doing the backstroke slowly against the current. When he finally slapped the target a huge cheer and clapping erupted from the crowd. He was helped into a Zodiac for the final trip to the quayside. There’s no way I could do what they did. Amazing stuff.

Then it was off to The Old Oak. My wife and son arrived just as we did which was happy timing. We commandeered their back room and a few extra chairs. People got drinks, some of us had sandwiches, we all chatted, and the group photo was taken (by my wife Jacinta. Thank you!)
Thank you so much to Gary and the staff of the bar. Wish we could have stayed longer.

Great day, feet are very sore from the unaccustomed exercise, hope we can do it again this summer!

Edit – that was fast! Katie has started posting some photos from the walk already. Check them out on the corkphotowalk tag on Flickr. She’s uploaded the same ones on pix.ie under the same tag too. Worth keeping an eye on that tag!

Aperture ƒ/3.5
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/60s

Big Wheel in the Showgrounds

The big wheel, as seen from The Atlantic Pond outside Pairc Ui Chaoimh in Cork.

Sort of fitting that I post a photo of a fairground ride on the day that Michael Jackson is laid to rest.

BTW – there are still places on the Cork photowalk on the 18th. It’s less than 2 weeks now! Anyone have any suggestions about where to go afterwards? Old Oak perhaps? Would they be serving any sort of food around 4pm? It’ll be hard to find a restaurant that could fit up to 50 of us and we’d be stuck sitting down at a table, not mingling and chatting.
I know, we pop into Burger King first eh? 🙂

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Focal length 200mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/320s

Autumn Trees

Beautiful golden leaves adorn the trees in Burnham Beeches near London. Last year I posted a photo of the same trees in Burnham Beeches and this version has been sitting in my TODO folder ever since, waiting for me to work on it.

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 400
Shutter speed 1/125s

Pedestrian Crossing

The pedestrian crossing outside Eason (I always say “Eason’s”, but it really is “Eason”. Just like Porter’s is “Porter”. These newsagents are a picky bunch!) where young and old traverse the street in relative safety.

Yes, it’s the current header image on this blog. If you’re reading this in the future when I may have changed themes, a cropped version of this was the header when I posted this image!

Aperture ƒ/4
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 400
Shutter speed 1/320s

Innards of the Building

The old Dunnes Stores building on Patrick’s Street in Cork is keeping it’s old style and attractive front facade. Phew. I still think it’s odd how a building site juts out behind it though.

PS. The nominations form for the Irish Blog Awards is now open. If you feel it deserves it, I’d be very grateful if you would nominate this blog in the “Best Photoblog” section. Like last year, I’m not going to stick a huge “vote for me” link on the blog and this is the only mention of the awards I’ll make.

Aperture ƒ/3.5
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 400
Shutter speed 1/500s

Smiles all around

The smiling attractive face of a model appeared on the hoarding surrounding the building site that is Dunnes Stores in Cork several months ago. It hasn’t had much of an effect on all however.

Aperture ƒ/5
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/60s

Gavin

Dunnes Stores in the centre of Cork City is being rebuilt as part of a major development. This is the first in a series of photos I’ll publish over the next few days.

This was taken very close to this photo shot about 10 months before!

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 400
Shutter speed 1/160s

Murphy’s

A Murphy’s Stout glass sits on a wall on the island of Cape Clear. That’s not Murphy’s in it obviously. That’d be a strange looking stout!

Happy new year everyone!

Aperture ƒ/16
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 400
Shutter speed 1/640s

Singing

One of the carol singers featured a few days ago singing her heart out on Patrick’s Street, Cork.

Aperture ƒ/5.6
Camera Canon EOS 40D
Focal length 162mm
ISO 800
Shutter speed 1/125s