I was there too
A street entertainer on stilts entertained the crowd at the Midleton Food and Drink Festival last September. I took photos of him in Cork too and I think he recognised me and my wife as he made a beeline for us and stopped to chat.
This was shot from below as he was towering over us, but I cropped a much larger shot. I used flash to illuminate his face against the bright sky.
| Aperture | ƒ/9 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/250s |
A sign at the entrance to my estate warns motorists to watch out for children playing on the street.
Just to prove that you don’t need a big digital SLR to take interesting photos, this was taken with my Panasonic FZ5. I saw the great cloudscape in the sky and illuminated the sign with the onboard flash.
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | DMC-FZ5 |
| Focal length | 6mm |
| ISO | 80 |
| Shutter speed | 1/1600s |
The tide is out in Cobh, Co. Cork while the sun sets in the west casting an orange glow over the water and boats in the harbour.
Method
This required some work to expose properly. The sky is bright while the harbour, houses and landscape are in shadow. Out with the layers, top layer for the sky was darkened and the opposite was done for the ground.
Then it’s the simple task of adding a layer mask to the top layer and rubbing out the dark bits to expose the brightened landscape.
When using a layer mask, never paint with an opacity of 100%, try 30% or even 5%. Don’t be afraid to do a rough job of exposing the bottom layer because with a layer mask you can always reverse the procedure by swapping the colour of your brush with an opposite colour!
Thank you all for the comments on yesterday’s post, The Lonely Swan, it’s great to get feedback and I’m glad when people get something out of my methods when I describe them. See what you’ve done? I did it again!
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/20s |
A solitary swan swims on the calm waters of The Lough as the sun disappears at the end of the day.
Believe it or not, this is a 10 second exposure that turned out much better than I could have hoped! I balanced my camera on the edge of the Lough, set it to Aperture priority mode at f/11, dialed the exposure down two stops, flipped up the camera flash and took the shot.
How does this work?
Hope that helps!
| Aperture | ƒ/11 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 10s |
The water is just underneath the pavement in this image made in Blarney last month.
What do the initials SV stand for? I don’t know, it’s too early on a Monday morning to figure that one out.
| Aperture | ƒ/5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/50s |
Water flows through Doneraile Park on a cold November afternoon. Despite the late season, leaves still cling to the branches of nearby trees although they’ve turned golden-orange and make a beautiful covering on the ground.
I was quite surprised that the Wikipedia page for Doneraile didn’t mention Elizabeth Aldworth, one of only three female members of a regular Masonic Lodge. Doneraile has quite a claim to fame!
I’ll have to get a good shot of Doneraile Court next time I’m down there. The sun was setting behind the building on my last visit so an early trip is necessary. The house is also surrounded by fencing making access impossible but hopefully those repair works will be completed soon!
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/6s |
Water drops from a railing in Cobh after a particularly heavy rain early in the day. That day’s shooting in Cobh was quite successful and by the evening there was a beautiful glow from the setting sun.
I took these firework photos from a spot on the right of this image.
| Aperture | ƒ/7.1 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 20mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/50s |
Swans rush to the bank of the Lough looking for bread from the crazy guy hanging over the water with a large black object…
This shows off one of my favourite night-time techniques. Long exposure with a flash. The long exposure captures the background while the flash illuminates the foreground objects, along with some nice movement blur.
It works really well at parties when people are dancing, especially if you’re lucky to capture a laughing face while the body is in motion.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1.6s |
The shipyards in Rushbrooke, just outside Cobh are still active although much quieter now than during their heyday. The cranes make for great photography against the moonlit sky.
This was shot from across the River Lee in Passage last November.
FRLinux asked about settings so here they are, including post-processing:
Flickr’s exif data for this is a bit wrong – gthumb says the exposure was for 5 seconds, aperture was wide open at f4.5, and lens set at 28mm, which you can probably multiply by 1.6 for the crop factor. ISO was 100.
Post Processing was done in the GIMP using 3 layers:
1. Top layer is transparent with a black gradient at the bottom. Layer mode is Overlay.
2. Middle layer is black and white, and blurred and with added noise. It’s set to screen mode, and opacity of 51%.
3. Bottom layer is the colour image, slightly saturated and darker.
Hope that helps!
| Aperture | ƒ/4.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 28mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 5s |
A small girl walks mournfully into the shopping center on Paul Street clutching her “BT Kids” balloon, probably handed to her by this lady.
| Aperture | ƒ/5.6 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 162mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/100s |
A charity collector stops to watch street entertainers on Patrick’s Street last October. The orange and red costume stands out just a little bit next to the dark clothing of those around him.
I almost jumped with glee when I saw this scene in front of me but the image itself paled when viewed later. The background buildings were too sharp so using layers and a layer mask I blurred the background and cropped the image a little.
Black and White Photography magazine has two articles on street photography this month.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 800 |
| Shutter speed | 1/640s |
Traffic along the Mallow Road hurries past on a cold and foggy December night. This was taken from the bridge near Rathpeacon and Killeens.
The bridge itself as you can see from the map above is much wider than the one in this picture but I wasn’t going to stand in the middle of a dark road at risk of being knocked over for my art. At least not this time anyway!
Traffic from the right is coming from Cork, while traffic from the left is coming from the direction of Mallow or Blarney.
PS. Nominations for the Irish Blog Awards are now open. There are several categories and you can nominate your favourite Irish blog in whichever one fits. In Photos won Best Photoblog last year but this is the only time I’ll mention the awards here unlike last year when I did the dog on it a bit! (Not that I wouldn’t mind winning again of course!)
I like these: Snow Squalls! and Palm House – I wish more photoblog software understood trackbacks and pings. It’s hard to start a conversation with them.
