Mulroy Bay II, one of two trawlers abandoned in the waters near Baltimore town in Co Cork, Ireland. Shot from Tullagh Cemetery.
PS. Calvin took a few nights shots of the Mulroy Bay II a few days ago when local artist Sheelagh Broderick and others lit up the vessel with high powered lanterns.
| Aperture | ƒ/40 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 200mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/6s |
The annual Blarney Half Marathon ran through the village and surrounding countryside yesterday. Here’s a gallery of shots I took while walking the dog. A light drizzle of rain soaked everyone, and hurried my steps home and back to the warmth. The weather was much nicer last year!
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 21mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/125s |
The curves tool is a very basic tool that can be used to improve photos with a few clicks of the mouse. It is used to change the brightness and contrast of an image. It can also modify the separate Red, Green and Blue channels of an image too. The Curves Tool has a histogram to represent the shadow, midtone and highlight detail in the image. In the GIMP, you access it by right clicking on an image and go to Colors->Curves.
This is the second article in my GIMP for Photographers series, but as usual, all of this applies to Photoshop, or any other image application with a Curves Tool. The first tutorial was on The Levels Tool, and worth a read if you missed it!
Here’s an image I shot at the Lord Mayor’s Picnic in Fitzgerald’s Park a few months ago, and the Curve Tool below it. Notice the histogram? The photo is fairly well exposed, but some highlights are “clipped”, as the histogram hits right hand side without sloping off.
It’s easy to brighten an image. Just drag points on the line up.
Now, let’s darken the image by dragging points down.
A classic use of the Curves Tool is to increase contrast in an image. You do this by darkening the shadows, and brightening the highlights. The curve looks sort of like an “S” when you do this. Don’t go overboard on this though, because it’s easy to lose detail in either direction.
If for some reason your image has too much contrast, a quick inverted S curve will solve that problem,
You can select any of the Red, Green and Blue channels and do strange things to your photos. Here’s what happens when you play with the Red Channel.
And here’s what happens when you change multiple colour channels in different ways.
After you have opened the Curves Tool, click anywhere in the image. Notice how a vertical line goes up and down the histogram/line? That vertical line is the colour of the pixel where you clicked. That can be useful if you’re trying to modify a particular part of a photo. This is what you get when you click on the black coat on the left of the image above.
| Aperture | ƒ/6.3 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/250s |
Tullagh Cemetery in Baltimore, Co Cork, Ireland is just a field away from the excellent Casey’s Hotel where we spent the last week. I went down there one evening to shoot a couple of half capsized trawlers in the bay when I turned around and saw some of the headstones silhouetted against the setting sun.
I went searching online and found that 3 Commonwealth burials of the 1914-1918 war were in this graveyard.
| Aperture | ƒ/11 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 59mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/640s |
A burned out car lies upside down next to the river in Inniscarra, Co Cork. I wonder if it’s still there?
| Aperture | ƒ/5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/60s |
Bits of a car that lay abandoned and burned out in Inniscarra next to the river.
| Aperture | ƒ/5.6 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/80s |
Eddie Rocket’s in Blackpool, Cork. I haven’t eaten here. The last time I did was in Galway at a Linux thing, probably in the late 90’s when all I remember was that it was overpriced. Still the same?
| Aperture | ƒ/9 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 125mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/320s |
A small sign in the window of a small B&B in Kinsale a few weeks ago. Business must be good, despite the downturn.
| Aperture | ƒ/7.1 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 88mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/125s |
Pete McCarthy wrote a great book called, McCarthy’s Bar: A Journey of Discovery In Ireland which I and my wife have both read through and enjoyed immensely. Unfortunately Pete died in 2004 after being diagnosed with cancer but this book and his second are well worth reading.
I just noticed the discrepancy between the spelling of this bar in Castletownbere, and the photo of it on the front of book. I wonder if they had someone modify the image?
| Aperture | ƒ/5.6 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/100s |
Some of the crowds who gathered for the Tour of Ireland as it passed through Blarney in Co. Cork.
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 88mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/160s |
Some of the final riders who passed through Blarney during the Tour of Ireland race last week.
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 33mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/100s |
Biosphere 2 in Arizona, from the outside with clouds.
| Aperture | ƒ/10 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/250s |
