Bertie Ahern, who recently announced his resignation as Taoiseach or Prime Minister of Ireland was well known for opening all sorts of events and buildings.
Plaques with his name dot the country.
PS. This image is now hosted on my own server where I have some referrer checks. If you don’t see it in your feed reader please leave a comment!
| Aperture | ƒ/5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/60s |
Wooah, digging into the archives here. This was shot in September 2006 while on holiday in Dingle. It’s a field on Slea Head at the tip of the Dingle Peninsula.
It’s hard to see in the web version but I love the brooding clouds in the large image!
| Aperture | ƒ/11 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/320s |
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 |
Check your web server logs. The Google Photos Screensaver 2.0 web bot does not respect robots.txt rules. It tripped over my tarpit a few days ago and I just noticed it hitting the same url again this morning. It’s banned now.
The strange thing is, I saw two requests from this user agent a few minutes ago. One from 66.249.85.129 which is a Gooogle IP, and another from 117.193.129.58 which looks like an Indian IP.
Which one tripped over my tarpit? The Google IP address, 66.249.85.129 did.
If you want to ban “Google Photos Screensaver 2.0”, add these lines to the .htaccess in your root directory (presuming you have mod_rewrite enabled of course!)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*Google Photos Screensaver 2.0.*
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
I also ban a number of other user agents. This could could be merged into a few less lines but this makes it easy to add new lines quickly:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Microsoft URL Control.*
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} WebAlta Crawler/2.0.*
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*larbin.*
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Python-urllib.*
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl.*
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*Indy Library.*
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*Jakarta Commons-HttpClient.*
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
This image broke my heart. I spent a long time trying to get the darkened sky layer and the brightened ground layer to merge nicely but I’m still not happy with it.
This small web version looks almost ok but I can still see the offending bits that are wrong.
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/200s |
A desert plant growing near the ranch we stayed at in Arizona.
I only thought of the title after seeing this image in b/w, but err, it suits doesn’t it?
| Aperture | ƒ/6.3 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/100s |
A very old looking post box on South Main Street, Cork stands next to the brewery there.
“An Chead Bhailiu Eile” and “Next Collection” are stamped just above the letter box, and both phrases are the same in Irish and English.
Photos from Snapfish.ie were delivered today. Quality is quite good, but they messed up the crop on one photo (you can’t crop it yourself unfortunately) and another photo was missing about an inch on one side somehow.
| Aperture | ƒ/5.6 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/80s |
A young girl on Patrick’s Street pushes her buggy with her mothercare bag. See the face she’s making? She means business!
| Aperture | ƒ/3.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/400s |
A bird atop the light outside my house calls into the glowing evening sky heralding the end of 2007.
After walking Oscar I had to grab my camera and shoot the beautiful evening sky. The background was this colour, there’s no trickery here except a little vignetting and sharpening.
| Aperture | ƒ/6.3 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 125mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/125s |
The trees along the Marina in Blackrock, Cork are bare at the this time of year but the sun shone today as if it was the height of Summer. It was lovely, even with the biting wind.
Shot from the grounds of Pairc Ui Chaoimh (no relation!) while out walking with my sister, my son Adam who slept quietly in his buggy, and my dog Oscar who loved the long walk.
| Aperture | ƒ/10 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/250s |
Scart Road, or Bothar na Scairte in Bantry, Co. Cork.
When you leave the wide open area near the harbour in Bantry you come across really steep hills to the east. I happened to walk that way pushing a buggy so I had to stop and catch my breath here before heading on up.
Bantry is much bigger than I thought before and I should get some nice urban shots there the next time I’m down that way!
| Aperture | ƒ/7.1 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/125s |
Old rope on the quayside in Bantry Harbour, Co. Cork. I love the different textures in this image, and I knew I’d be happy with it in b/w!
| Aperture | ƒ/6.3 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/125s |
