Clusters of mushrooms growing out of an old tree trunk by a small river.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 50mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/8s |
Sunset Afterglow at Inniscarra
Tiny Mushroom
Here’s one of my attempts at a mushroom photo, focus stacked from 4 roughly the same images.
This sort of photography is really hard isn’t it? You have to get down really low which is a problem itself if you don’t have a tripod to suit. An extension tube is a requirement as I don’t have a macro lens, and then trying to manually focus on the different parts of the mushroom is a challenge.
The focus assist in my camera really helped there. It shows dancing dots where the image is focused but even at f/14 it wasn’t enough to encompass the entire mushroom from front to back. Tap to zoom paid off a few times as it blows up the image to help focusing.
It was fascinating to see the focus dots move like a wave through the scene as I zoomed in and out. Yes, zooming in and out moved the focus point significantly! Significantly here means a few centimetres. Everything is small scale here.
| Aperture | ƒ/14 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 105mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 2.5s |
Radar Domes on Mount Gabriel
The radar domes on Mount Gabriel to the north of the town of Schull in West Cork. According to Wikipedia they were blown up by the IRA in 1982!
In the late 1970s, as part of the development of Eurocontrol (the European air traffic control system), two radar domes were built on the top of the mountain.
In September 1982 the Irish National Liberation Army, an Irish republican paramilitary group, blew up the radar domes, wrongly claiming that they were being used by NATO in violation of Irish neutrality.
Mount Gabriel
| Aperture | ƒ/9 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 600mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/2500s |
Slip into the water
Cluck Cluck
One Albert Quay
Thompsons of Cork
Winners of the Stone Mad Blarney Half-Marathon 2021
I spent a few hours photographing the runners finishing the half-marathon in Blarney today. There was a huge turnout.Weather was dire. Rain falling most of the time with gusts of wind to carry it into your face and on to the camera.
I don’t have any particular bad-weather strategy as I usually stay inside when the weather is bad but this time I took an umbrella, tucked under my arm to hold it up and a small towel to dry the lens and camera body when it inevitably got wet.
2000 photos later, 48GB of data and 65% of my battery gone and the last contestant crossed the finish line. I posted a few of the photos on the Blarney Blog Facebook page but there are more than 700 in total to post and I’ll upload them over the next few days and update this post with a link.
| Aperture | ƒ/6.3 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 49mm |
| ISO | 320 |
| Shutter speed | 1/200s |
Hoppy posing for the camera
The Bus Station at Night
The boats of Gougane Barra
Another early morning sunrise photo at Gougane Barra with Blarney Photography Club. Way back in 2016 I published a similar photo but the Gougane Barra boats were swapped. They’ve been there quite some time!
| Aperture | ƒ/10 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 24mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/4s |