My neighbours decorate their houses with lights and decorations at Christmas time each year. Here’s a few snapshots of their efforts.
Happy Christmas! Have a great day today!
Category: Lights
The toilets in the Cork International Airport Hotel are a pretty amazing sight to behold. Here’s the gent’s loo. The lighting changes constantly. I took a few shots within seconds of each other and they were all different. Luckily it wasn’t in use when I wandered in ..
This is the first shot I’ve posted from the Canon 40D. Unfortunately it’s quite noisy as it was shot hand held at ISO 1000, but the noise really only became noticeable after I applied the Lomo plugin to it. Love this camera. This photo and others taken at the hotel are also in this post. I used my 580EX flash for most of the people shots, but one or two were in available light with the ISO pumped up.
| Aperture | ƒ/3.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 1000 |
| Shutter speed | 1/15s |
Ever since I posted Short Circuit I’ve been meaning to post a small tutorial on how I did it. There were so many comments from people clamouring to know the secret of how I made traces of light dance around the picture frame.
Actually, nobody asked. Will was kind enough to suggest another title but otherwise it went unremarked. *sob* I’m going to tell you anyway.
The image is a long exposure shot, of at least 1 second and preferably 4 or 5 seconds. I simply stood in front of a construction site at night, lifted the camera, hit the shutter and rotated the camera around in my hands. Needless to say, I did not have the strap around my neck or I would have done myself damage!
At first I tried Aperture Priority mode, setting the aperture really small (big numbers, around F/22), but then I decided to do the obvious, and used Shutter Priority and simply set the speed(time) I wanted. Below are a few shots from that night, including the scene as it was on the night and some experimental shots as I practiced. The technique is really easy, but can create some really interesting and eye catching photos.
| Aperture | ƒ/3.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 800 |
| Shutter speed | 1/10s |
Electricity everywhere and so evident at night in street lighting. I took this shot after meeting Mark for coffee 2 weeks ago. It’s this building site right in the middle of Cork City. More conventional shots will follow over the next few days.
| Aperture | ƒ/11 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 8s |
Cork City Hall and the urban lighting on both sides of the River Lee are reflected in the water at night.
I took this back in October 2006 when the Elysian hadn’t reached it’s glorious present day height. I venture to say that a photo of this scene now would feature at least a part of the Elysian buildings blocking the sky in the top right of the photo.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 6s |
The sun had just set over this stretch of the water in Cork Harbour near Monkstown and the sky had turned a beautiful orange and purple and red and golden.
Much to the annoyance of my dog Oscar, I stopped and spent a good 10 minutes shooting this scene and basked in the beautiful colour.
| Aperture | ƒ/22 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 10s |
Categories
London Eye
The London Eye (or Millenium Wheel as it is also called) is clearly visible in this shot of London City Center taken last weekend as my plane banked on approach to Heathrow Airport.
We arrived around 7am when it was still dark. Thankfully I had my camera in a small bag at hand because I had missed some great shots of Tuscon, Arizona because my camera had been tucked away in the overhead bins.
Sorry for the large file size. It’s a noisy image, and Jpeg compression isn’t that great with random noise.
| Aperture | ƒ/3.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 3200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/20s |
An ice cream van in December? Yes, Mr Whirly was in Kinsale. Obviously someone isn’t bothered by the cold!
| Aperture | ƒ/14 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 25s |
A long five second exposure at f/22 captured cars stuck on Patrick Street about a month ago.
They’ve done some fabulous work on the pavements of Cork’s main thoroughfare but it hasn’t made a jot of difference to vehicular traffic, except to make it more dangerous to pedestrians as they saunter across junctions blissfully unaware of the cars bearing down on them ..
| Aperture | ƒ/22 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 5s |
Light trails from passing cars fill the frame with a golden glow on the corner of The Grand Parade and Washington Street, Cork.
Long exposure shot made possible by the traffic light switch on which I rested my camera!
| Aperture | ƒ/22 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 13s |
Christmas Baubles hang in Porter’s newsagent, Cork. Christmas decoration is everywhere but reflective surfaces present an opportunity to take a self portrait. Yes, that’s me reflected! 🙂
Hope you had a great Christmas Day. We went travelling and I must say it was the best Christmas Day in a long time. I think I must invest in a WII next year…
Blue glowing and sparkling Christmas lights flow down from the roof of Benetton on Oliver Plunkett St. in Cork.
I loved the reflection in the car and had to take this shot. It was hand held and I’m quite sure I pumped up the ISO quite a bit to get a half-decent shutter speed. Resizing helps to hide and smooth out the noise!