I was there too
Because of the disc’s enormous magical field, at sunrise, the morning light flows over like thick golden syrup, accumulating in valleys and then slowly crawling over the top of an hillside. The same can be said about the night, which spreads like plum jam.
Terry Pratchett
Sunrise over Muckross Lake in Killarney, Co Kerry. On a visit there with Blarney Photography Club one morning in October 2021.
| Aperture | ƒ/11 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 191mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/800s |
Early in October we were lucky to have some wonderful weather for almost hours at a time. I spent some of that time in Ballydehob taking photos of the fabulous bridge there.
Ten minutes later it started raining and I was running to the car!
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 16mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/250s |
We’ve been lucky this year that the autumn and early winter has been so mild. It was 15C today! I think of this display as one last hurrah before the cold and rain and wind really sets in.
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 16mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/50s |
Clusters of mushrooms growing out of an old tree trunk by a small river.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 50mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/8s |
Here’s one of my attempts at a mushroom photo, focus stacked from 4 roughly the same images.
This sort of photography is really hard isn’t it? You have to get down really low which is a problem itself if you don’t have a tripod to suit. An extension tube is a requirement as I don’t have a macro lens, and then trying to manually focus on the different parts of the mushroom is a challenge.
The focus assist in my camera really helped there. It shows dancing dots where the image is focused but even at f/14 it wasn’t enough to encompass the entire mushroom from front to back. Tap to zoom paid off a few times as it blows up the image to help focusing.
It was fascinating to see the focus dots move like a wave through the scene as I zoomed in and out. Yes, zooming in and out moved the focus point significantly! Significantly here means a few centimetres. Everything is small scale here.
| Aperture | ƒ/14 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 105mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 2.5s |
The radar domes on Mount Gabriel to the north of the town of Schull in West Cork. According to Wikipedia they were blown up by the IRA in 1982!
In the late 1970s, as part of the development of Eurocontrol (the European air traffic control system), two radar domes were built on the top of the mountain.
In September 1982 the Irish National Liberation Army, an Irish republican paramilitary group, blew up the radar domes, wrongly claiming that they were being used by NATO in violation of Irish neutrality.
Mount Gabriel
| Aperture | ƒ/9 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 600mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/2500s |
