Feline eyes stare at me

I love cats. There’s nothing quite as relaxing as rubbing a cat’s soft fur while he basks in the heat of the sun. Some people hate cats however and I’m non-plussed. Perhaps it’s a primal instinct in them?

This is a friend’s cat as he was eating from a bowl. It’s my desktop picture!

Aperture ƒ/5.6
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 144mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/60s

Alcatraz Control Center

The Control Center in Alcatraz. This room is visible to all visitors to the prison and is beautifully preserved.

I couldn’t find anything specific about this room but Alcatraz History has a very good site with lots of information about the prison on Alcatraz Island.

Aperture ƒ/4
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/2.5s

A view on an Alcatraz Street

Looking through a doorway onto one of the streets of Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco. Tourists congregate while listening to the electronic tour guide.

I think I should have all my photos of Alcatraz and San Francisco posted before my next trip there in July.

Aperture ƒ/4
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/30s

City people in a b/w world

Shopping, talking, walking and rushing. People in the concrete jungle.

Selective colourisation using a layer mask to hide a b/w layer above the original colour layer. Shot from the same place I took this photo in front of The Body Shop in Cork.

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/200s

From the old hospital to the new

In stark contrast to the newly built Cork University Maternity Hospital this was taken in one of the older ones. If you look carefully you can read the notice on the wall which starts, ‘Central Sterile Supply Department’. This building is in a state of disrepair you’d hardly expect in a flourishing economy like Ireland but the public health services are underfunded and top heavy with too many managers and money is siphoned off into over-budget projects.

Part three of my old hospital series.

In other news, midwives voted against moving to the new maternity hospital in Cork from the three maternity hospitals in the city. The new hospital will be understaffed when it opens however, with staff numbers apparently being made up of unqualified porters, janitors and other personnel. The move was supposed to happen an hour ago, but has been set back to 4pm though doubts remain as to whether it’ll open at all today.

Aperture ƒ/3.5
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/8s

The patient springer spaniels

Pictured outside Tesco shopping center in Douglas, Cork last year. These springer spaniels waited patiently for their owner to come out of the shops.

Aperture ƒ/11
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 12mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/200s

I love you

A love message written on a wall for someone special.

“I love you”

This is the second time I’ve posted a love message on my blog. Those messages are the most basic human communications of our age and before. Many thousands of years ago men were writing on cave walls. How little has changed? Graffiti is everywhere and it doesn’t take much imagination to scrawl a message to a loved one. I wonder who made this message and for whom? Are they still together?

This message is written on a wall in an old building on the grounds of a Cork Hospital. After I took a number of photos around those ruins a security guard approached me and asked what I was up to and that I stop shooting. He was nice enough and friendly, but he said I’d need a permit to shoot on hospital grounds. I didn’t argue with him, and thankfully I was almost finished anyway.

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

Clouds over the Lough

Clouds gather and block out the sun over the Lough in Cork last year. The display was beautiful as light wispy clouds and dark brooding rain clouds skirted across the sky.

The sun made one final effort to shine, but the clouds won out and it started to rain moments later.

Aperture ƒ/13
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/500s

Sleeping it off in Cork City

As a rule I don’t photograph the homeless very often but I don’t think the sleeping gentleman in this photo was homeless. Rather a heavy night on the town I suspect.

This was snapped while walking past Marks & Spencers on Patrick’s Street last year. I spotted the security people and had the camera ready without breaking stride.

I wonder what happened next?

Aperture ƒ/3.5
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/500s

I’m still waiting

A dad waits for his better half to come out of a clothes shop on Patrick’s Street.

Aperture ƒ/3.5
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/1000s

Waves crash at Garretstown

Waves crash onto the beach at Garretstown last April.

Ryan has put his photos of the Irish Blog Awards online. Great shots!

Aperture ƒ/10
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 200mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/400s

Rusted, old and bent

This is part of another pillar near the one pictured yesterday but in much worse condition.

I love the textures and the way that rust practically flows down. It’s a shame I didn’t get everything in focus though.

I figured out why my posts started showing “This photo is currently unavailable”. On March 1st Flickr changed the way they name their images. Previously it was only a matter of changing _m.jpg to _o.jpg to get the original image, or swapping in “_s.jpg” to get a small thumbnail. Now the numbers in the filename change as well.

It’s a simple but tedious task to change the image before I publish a post but the thumbnails you see at the top of this page are generated by a small script which now needs to be rewritten and made a lot smarter.

Aperture ƒ/10
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 88mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/250s