The fish points south

The top of Shandon Bells, the tower of St. Anne’s Church in Cork City as seen from Bell’s Field. I’d like to visit that tower again and photograph Bell’s Field from there. 🙂

From a recent outing with Blarney Photography Club.


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7M3
Focal length571.8mm
ISO1000
Shutter speed1/1000s

Heron in the River Lee

A heron walks along the weir by the Lee Fields, waiting for fish.
Heron in the River Lee
A heron waiting for fish to swim past on the weir in the River Lee.

While on an outing with Blarney Photography Club to the Lee Fields, we were lucky enough to see a very patient heron attempt to catch his dinner.

The light was falling, and it cast a lovely warm glow on everything.

The heron did catch a fish eventually. I was 100m away down river and on hearing a shout looked up and caught a very blurry photo of the bird with the fish in it’s mouth.


Apertureƒ/6.3
CameraILCE-7M3
Focal length600mm
ISO800
Shutter speed1/500s

The North Side

The north side of Cork City, looking at the Cathedral of St. Mary & St. Anne and the Church of the Ascension, Gurranabraher.

Prompted by a photo I saw Joe Healy post this morning on Twitter. It hasn’t changed much since 1984.


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7M3
Focal length98mm
ISO100
Shutter speed1/10s

Dodge and Burn using Lightroom Masks

It occurred to me while watching a video by Nick Page on Photoshop’s Luminosity masks that Lightroom Classic can now do something similar with luminance range masks. It’s not quite the same and won’t be as powerful, but it saves jumping to Photoshop and creating a 100MB tiff file.

You could always dodge and burn with the brush tool in Lightroom Classic, and by using a Brush Mask you can still do the same:

  1. Create a brush mask.
  2. Brush where you want to dodge or burn.
  3. Adjust exposure.
  4. Repeat for different exposures.

By using a luminance range mask in Lightroom Classic I could select the shades of dark or bright that I want to apply the effect to. By subtracting with a brush, I could modify the shape of the dodge/burn mask to my taste.

Sure enough, someone had done what I wanted already and had made a video of it. For a global dodge/burn, a change of .50 exposure can be a little too much, but that depends on your image.

For extra points, make an inverted sky mask and intersect with a luminance range mask to apply the dodge/burn there only, leaving your sky untouched.

And finally, make a preset of it! Click on the “+” next to Presets while editing and then “Create Preset…”. Uncheck everything and name your preset. Click on your dodge/burn masks in Masking, and click on “Support Amount Slider” in case you’ve modified that and save your new preset. New masks will be created when you apply the preset to another image. You can modify the intensity of the change to suit the new image.

If you’ve added an inverted sky mask, your preset will find the sky in any photo you apply the preset to everything but that part of the image.

The new masking tools in Lightroom Classic are very powerful. They’re really worth learning!

The Buildings of the Lee Fields

The Old Cork Waterworks
County Hall
County Hall
Unfinished Student Accomodation
Unfinished Student Accommodation

From the very old buildings of the Cork Waterworks across the River Lee to County Hall built in the last fifty years to unfinished student accommodation on the old Coca-Cola bottling site.

Taken on a recent outing with Blarney Photography Club.


Apertureƒ/5
CameraILCE-7M3
Focal length156.5mm
ISO200
Shutter speed1/160s