• Curiosity in the Old Town

    We were wandering up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh when I spotted these two women looking up. At what, I’m not sure, there wasn’t anything special in the building they were looking at. Is there such a thing as “Edinburgh Neck”?


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/640s

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  • Voices for Gaza

    Every Saturday there’s a rally in Cork supporting the people of Gaza and protesting the awful genocide being carried out by the IDF.


    Apertureƒ/4
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO160
    Shutter speed1/500s

  • Sailing Back in Time: The Galeón Andalucía Visits Ireland

    The sun had set by the time I got into the city to photograph the Andalucía. Twenty minutes earlier, the sun was shining on it and made for a spectacular photo.

    I made a bracketed shot from further down the quay because there were bright lights on the front of the boat that would make a shot from that side difficult. I like this shot anyway, as it captures the old with the new. The buildings at the quayside are old, the ship is a replica of an old ship and other buildings nearby are new and modern.

    I did take some more photos. A rather drunk man asked me to take a photo of him with the ship, using his phone. A few minutes later, he asked me to photograph him in front of Penrose House here and then went off home.

    So, I discovered that the Galeón Andalucía is not just a static museum piece. It is the only replica of a 16th-17th century Spanish galleon in the world that actively sails today, having travelled over 80,000 miles and visited ports on four continents since its launch in 2009.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO400
    Shutter speed1/6s

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  • Green Light Go

    One more from last week. This time, the long exposure shot is of a bus heading to Parnell Place in Cork. The traffic light had just turned green, so the bus was driving slowly, accelerating as it went. It made a colourful impression on the digital sensor of my camera!


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO50
    Shutter speed4s

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  • Light Trails on Eamon de Valera Bridge

    Evening traffic whizzes past last week. Just after the sun had set, but the street light above my head hadn’t come on yet, so I got a nice long exposure.

    How does photography affect your memory? Interesting podcast episode.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length33mm
    ISO50
    Shutter speed8s

  • Night Shifts and Trailing Lights

    Construction signs on Parnell Bridge in front of Cork City Hall were lit up by a passing bus a few nights ago.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO50
    Shutter speed6s

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  • The Tranquil Waters of Robert’s Cove

    Robert’s Cove in Co. Cork looked particularly spectacular this afternoon when I visited. We arrived to a sudden shower of rain, but it soon stopped, and we wandered up the path alongside the cliff away from the beach.

    Panoramas really don’t post well online. I need to do something like they do on Instagram where they break it up into 3 identical sized images and the gallery allows you to scroll from left to right smoothly. An idea for a new WordPress block?

    Two podcast episodes you might like:


    Apertureƒ/4.5
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/640s

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  • The Galeón Andalucía in Cork

    The Galeón Andalucía, a replica of a 16th-17th century Spanish galleon docked in Cork a few days ago for the European Maritime Days to Play, on yesterday and today.

    I wandered down the quays where there were a number of other boats. A nice day out for school kids who got a few hours out of the classroom too!


    Apertureƒ/2.2
    CameraGalaxy S23 Ultra
    Focal length2.2mm
    ISO50
    Shutter speed1/3800s

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  • Trácht ar Mhalairt Slí

    If the road works, why are there signs pointing out where diverted traffic goes?

    Did you know that most street signs in Ireland are bilingual? As Gaeilge on top and English below.

    Thanks Henry, for the company last night. A good spot to do long exposure photography.

    Oh, here’s something interesting about this photo. It’s made of two images I had to merge together in Photoshop because my long exposure shot wasn’t long enough. Two 4 second shots of a slowly moving bus on a corner.

    Set the layer type of the top layer to “screen” and the lights in the air come through.

    The resulting tiff file was 318.7MB. That’s a monstrosity for a simple image so I converted it to DNG which resulted in a 233.3MB file, and then to lossy DNG. That squeezed it down to 7.5MB! Not bad for a 9417×6278 image.

    I couldn’t see any difference in image quality. There were slight differences when I clicked the auto Transform button, but nothing major.

    Original & Lossy


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length29mm
    ISO50
    Shutter speed6s

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  • A Sunlit Stroll in Athens

    It was a blisteringly hot day in Athens when we were walking around the ruins of the old city when I saw this woman in a bright yellow jumpsuit approach.

    That yellow colour jumped out at me, but it was only later I noticed the man behind her carrying her bag. Is that a charging cable going from her phone to the bag? Nice to have someone else carry your bag on a hot day, with a battery for your phone too! 🙂


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7M3
    Focal length16mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/500s

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  • A Visitor’s Perspective of the Hagia Sophia

    Another tourist watches for a moment before taking her own photo with her phone, inside the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Non Muslims are restricted in where they can go now because it was turned back into a mosque again in 2020.

    This was on the morning after I spent the day in bed recovering from food poisoning, so I didn’t take a whole lot of photos and had to go back to bed afterwards as I was so tired from the walk. This page has a number of photos showing what it’s like. Definitely try to avoid the busy times. It’s thronged with visitors.


    Apertureƒ/8
    CameraILCE-7RM5
    Focal length24mm
    ISO10000
    Shutter speed1/60s

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  • Trump Tower Construction by the River

    Chicago in 2005 was a city in flux, and nowhere was that more obvious than at the Trump Tower construction site, right on the banks of the Chicago River. I was walking at the edge of the site and took a bunch of photos, some of which I’ve posted over the years.

    What you see in front of you appears to be the open area next to the “new” tower. Over to the left is the Wrigley Building and looking at Google Street View gives a good view of what it looks like now, from across the river.

    I haven’t been back to Chicago in twenty years. I’d love to see it again.


    Apertureƒ/6.3
    CameraCanon EOS 20D
    Focal length18mm
    ISO100
    Shutter speed1/100s

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