Courtmacsherry Dead End


Courtmacsherry Dead End

The little town of Courtmacsherry in Co. Cork is a picturesque tourist village with pretty looking multi-coloured houses visible on the way into the town from Timoleague.

This makes the attitude of the people we met there all the more confusing. We parked in the middle of the town, Jacinta wanted to check out a pottery shop, and walked with Oscar down the road. We passed by several people, mostly tourists by their clothes, and unusually, they kept their heads down watching the ground and never said “hello” or even commented on Oscar! We’re used to people stopping us and asking about him so this was disconcerting.

Later on we rested on the wall of the harbour and a few people did greet us thankfully.

The image was processed using two layers. One for the sky and the other for the ground. Sky was burned heavily to bring out the clouds while the ground was dodged and brightened with the Curves tool.

I’ve geotagged this photo on Flickr. Works well enough. It even knew where “courtmacsherry ireland” was!

courtmacsherry map

Aperture ƒ/13
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/320s

Denis Murphy, Castle Street


Denis Murphy, Castle Street

There’s something fascinating for me about old buildings. Perhaps it’s the history they have seen and the memories they hold. Some of the old buildings on Castle Street, Cork are really interesting. I noticed this small building nestled in between it’s larger brethern and when I saw some people walking by I took my shot.

It was processed afterwards with the gimp Wide Angle plugin and I did a little work changing colours but not much else.

I like this: downtown strips, simply because it’s a neat idea I haven’t seen anyone else do yet.

Aperture ƒ/7.1
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/200s

Jill Greenberg in the Sunday Times

Jill Greenberg’s infamous photos of children crying and upset are in today’s Sunday Times magazine in the article “Taking candy from a baby”. It’s unfortunate that such a reputable publication chose to publish the photos and I can only imagine the horrified response from parents as they sat down to breakfast with the newspaper this morning.

The article doesn’t say much, only summing up what we already know but the last paragraph disgusted me at the implication present in it for anyone who protests at her photography and methods.

Greenberg is appalled that some people even saw a sexual context to the pictures. “It didn’t even occur to me that people might think that. A lot of the people who’ve been upset are men. I don’t know if it’s because they project their own desires on these images and they don’t know what to do with them and blame me.”

Welcome everyone from Net Mums. I’m glad you found your way here!

Staring at me


Staring at me

Am I feeling conspicuous or what?

I tried shooting from the hip yesterday with the strap of my camera over my shoulder and my camera in a horizontal position instead of being wrapped around my hand in a vertical orientation.

It proved useful, but I found that:

  1. More of my shots were blurry, perhaps because either the back and forth movement of me walking. I tried shooting in Tv (Shutter Priority mode) and even at 1/200sec and higher there was shake.
  2. It’s great getting more of the surroundings in but I miss the feet.

Aperture ƒ/6.3
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 800
Shutter speed 1/80s

Making Beautiful Portraits

Photodoto published Making Portraits this morning which got me thinking more about my street photography tomorrow. I wonder will people pose on the street for me? Do I have the nerve to approach complete strangers, make them feel at ease, connect with them and take their photo?

I know I won’t need it when I’m outside tomorrow, but Strobist linked to a professional lighting setup for portraiture in a studio. Might come in handy later.

The venerable Philip Green’s portrait page is of course a good read. It’s been around for years and I’ve read it many times. If you haven’t browsed http://www.photo.net/learn/ yet then you’re missing out!

Finally, Anandtech’s Portrait Tutorial is good, includes examples but I wonder why their second photo was included. The poor girl has stone columns coming out of her shoulders, even when blurred!

Rawstudio – free cross-platform raw converter

Digital Photo School’s latest posting is about the eternal question, RAW Vs Jpeg? It’s a really good read and goes through “what a RAW file is .. compared to a Jpeg” which can be a bit mysterious if all you’re used to is uploading images straight from your camera!

The article was written in response to this discussion on Flickr on the same subject. I skimmed through the thread, but the very last comment pointed me at Raw Studio, a GPL licensed RAW converted for Linux, Windows and Mac and any other OS that supports GTK+.

It’s still rather new, being only at version 0.3 but I downloaded the very latest code from SVN and it worked fine. I pointed it at Matt’s RAW photos of my wedding and a few moments later up popped a thumbnail browser, preview window and side-panel controls. There are no automatic auto-exposure/auto-everything options but the auto-white balance worked perfectly.

It uses dcraw, the RAW conversion engine used by many projects, including Google’s Picasa (and no, there is no virus in the Linux version!) and my favourite GIMP RAW plugin, UFRaw. Linux RAW has a good overview of Linux software for working with RAW images.

At this early stage I’m very impressed!

The Brown Line to Kimball


The Brown Line to Kimball

Aboard one of the trains of the Chicago L, the elevated and underground train network in Chicago. I think this was taken near the south end of the Loop, possibly around the corner from the library.

The last time I was in Chicago I took the L for nostalgic reasons and because it’s not a half-bad way for a tourist to see the town. The stations of the Loop are all elevated above street level and some afford a good view down the main streets of downtown Chicago! Maps and schedules are posted in each station, on the trains and online too making it very easy to find your way around.

Here’s a tour of the Loop with pictures if you’d like to know more.

I like this: Real Esteli played its best match ever – couple of great football shots!

Aperture ƒ/5.6
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/100s

Free online book: Street Photography for the Purist

Deviant Art member +cweeks has put together a book entitled Street Photography for the Purist from the photographs of several DA members. It also includes forwards and commentary from those people and looks like a great read.

It’s a 160 page tome, downloadable as a PDF and weighing in at just over 10MB. I’ve skimmed through the first 60 or so pages but I’ll have a closer look at it later. There are some stunning b/w street shots in the book, from the very old to the young, and even a demonstration of how one photographer shoots, possibly the only colour shots in the book.

I haven’t done much street photography in the past few weeks but I’m itching to try again, and to work in black and white too.

Did I say it was free? Yes I did! What’s stopping you enjoying this photographic trip across Europe and the US? Go download it now! (via Photoheadlines)

Canon 400D details

Just saw on DSLR Blog that the Canon 400D has been announced. Good news for everyone thinking of buying a digital SLR for the first time but not an upgrade option if you have any of the XT/350/20D/30D cameras.

The extra 2 million pixels only adds a small border worth of pixels around images so you really aren’t missing anything unless you blow your photos up to poster size on a regular basis!

Oh, I hate product announcement blogs so don’t worry, this blog isn’t going down that road any time soon! Photography Blog, I Like Cameras and Digital Photography Blog have all succumbed to the temptation of posting press releases and camera reviews for the most part. Bah.

Welcome everyone searching for information about this new camera!

Wrigley Building Sky Bridge


Wrigley Building Sky Bridge

This is the sky bridge between the two sections of the Wrigley Building in Chicago. We were walking through when I looked up and immediately noticed the leading lines of the buildings and the walkway.

Way back in 2003 I photographed the Wrigley Building a few times and I’m pretty sure it featured in the film Batman Begins too.

Wrigley.com has a page dedicated to the history of the building and it makes for interesting reading.

While searching ocaoimh.ie for those pictures, I came across this little nugget about Bill Gates from 2002. 🙂

Something else from the archives for you street shooters – A face in the crowd, tips from the Street Photography List on capturing the elusive face in the maddening crowd.

I like this: Cow & Gate, never mind the baby food.

Aperture ƒ/9
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/250s
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