• Alcatraz 2E 53 45

    A vintage 1940’s truck with the license plate number, “2E 53 45” sits under an archway on the Island of Alcatraz. It’s a beautifully restored vehicle that attracts the attention of all tourists as they walk past.

    Here’s a few more pictures of the truck but I’m surprised nobody has posted the registration plate of the truck! I love the variety of textures in this image.

    First snow of the year fell today! It’s not sitting on the ground, but it’s nice to watch from inside. It’s not so nice walking about in it. Even Oscar didn’t want to go out, but the call of nature won out on his reluctance!

    Aperture ƒ/4
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 10mm
    ISO 800
    Shutter speed 1/15s
  • Bay Bridge Reflections

    Light from the Bay Bridge in San Francsico shimmers in the waters of the harbour. To the left one of the fire fighting boats of the SF Fire Department can be seen.

    Posting this landmark of San Francisco today as most of the rest of Automattic make their way to Mexico. Here’s another shot from another night near the bridge.

    Aperture ƒ/4
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 10mm
    ISO 200
    Shutter speed 2s
  • The BMW Mini – NCT 5

    A white mini parked on the sidewalk in suburban San Francisco.

    Aperture ƒ/7.1
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 10mm
    ISO 200
    Shutter speed 1/100s
  • SF Weekly

    San Francisco Weekly is only one of a number of free publications available in that city. Not sure what day it’s out though. Doh!

    My photos went down reasonably well at Photography Ireland yesterday. There’s a good street photography forum there. It’s worth a visit if you’re looking for inspiration or critiques or simply want to talk to like-minded people!

    4 Easy Photoshop Techniques to Make Your Pictures Pop! has a few techniques I’ve used myself in the past. I meant to blog about those techniques, but hey, they’ve done the hard work now, including screenshots and everything. Good post!

    Aperture ƒ/11
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 10mm
    ISO 200
    Shutter speed 1/250s
  • Looking out from Homely House

    Last September we stayed in Dingle for a weekend and had lunch in Homely House, a restaurant in the town. Check out the previous link for a picture of Brian Lapen and EagleSpirit who ran the cafe.

    Unfortunately for Dingle they’re now in Hawaii, and the building was destined for demolition last I heard so it’s quite likely this view is gone now!

    Aperture ƒ/4
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 10mm
    ISO 200
    Shutter speed 1/500s
  • The little red door

    A small house is stuck between two larger buildings in Dingle, Co. Kerry. I’m not sure what caught my eye in the first place but I think it was the red door.

    Shot on a wet morning that brightened up after an hour of intense rain.

    Aperture ƒ/4
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 10mm
    ISO 200
    Shutter speed 1/400s
  • The swans they are a coming

    Swans rush to the bank of the Lough looking for bread from the crazy guy hanging over the water with a large black object…

    This shows off one of my favourite night-time techniques. Long exposure with a flash. The long exposure captures the background while the flash illuminates the foreground objects, along with some nice movement blur.
    It works really well at parties when people are dancing, especially if you’re lucky to capture a laughing face while the body is in motion.

    Aperture ƒ/4
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 10mm
    ISO 200
    Shutter speed 1.6s
  • Scary! Scary! Google forgets In Photos

    I wondered why traffic was slow to the site today and then I searched for donncha. Insted of this site being the second or third link it’s nowhere to be found. I know it’s only a Google hiccup that other blogs have experienced too of late but it’s frightening watching my logs. They’re not moving, much.

    You can practically hear the tumbleweed blowing across the screen it’s so quiet.

    Much later .. I figured out what caused the problem. It was my Google sitemap. The “R&H Hall” tag caused a problem because it wasn’t encoded properly. Adding a urlencode() around the right bit of code fixed that. Must tell the author of UTWgoogleSitemaps…

  • Getting started with Bibble Labs

    I’ve been using Bibble Labs Pro for a few months now to process my RAW files but I know I’m not using it to it’s fullest potential.

    I should have looked around the Bibble website because their learning center has a number of videos to help the Bibble newbie!

    Things I don’t like:

    • I can’t believe there’s still no single-step undo in Bibble. It’s either CTRL-R to reset the image settings back to the RAW format, or there’s an awful workaround by copy/pasting the whole image before major actions.
    • Bibble crashes. It usually only happens when saving an image. I have noticed that it happens most often when I change virtual desktop so there’s probably a bug there somewhere.

    Despite those misgivings, it’s still worth looking at the trial version.

  • The Moonlit Shipyards

    The shipyards in Rushbrooke, just outside Cobh are still active although much quieter now than during their heyday. The cranes make for great photography against the moonlit sky.

    This was shot from across the River Lee in Passage last November.

    FRLinux asked about settings so here they are, including post-processing:

    Flickr’s exif data for this is a bit wrong – gthumb says the exposure was for 5 seconds, aperture was wide open at f4.5, and lens set at 28mm, which you can probably multiply by 1.6 for the crop factor. ISO was 100.

    Post Processing was done in the GIMP using 3 layers:
    1. Top layer is transparent with a black gradient at the bottom. Layer mode is Overlay.
    2. Middle layer is black and white, and blurred and with added noise. It’s set to screen mode, and opacity of 51%.
    3. Bottom layer is the colour image, slightly saturated and darker.

    Hope that helps!

    Aperture ƒ/4.5
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 28mm
    ISO 100
    Shutter speed 5s
  • Golden Gate Bridge in Fog

    Tourists on a ferry pass by the fog shrouded Golden Gate Bridge
    in San Francisco Bay.

    The day was beautiful out near Alcatraz but fog covered the upper reaches of the bridge and I thought would make a pleasing shot.

    PS. I’m not finished with photos from 2006 by a long shot!

    Aperture ƒ/13
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 200mm
    ISO 100
    Shutter speed 1/800s
  • Unhappy Child

    A small girl walks mournfully into the shopping center on Paul Street clutching her “BT Kids” balloon, probably handed to her by this lady.

    Aperture ƒ/5.6
    Camera Canon EOS 20D
    Focal length 162mm
    ISO 400
    Shutter speed 1/100s