Commercial property for sale, right in the centre of Bantry, Co Cork. Perfect location. Property may need modernising.
| Aperture | ƒ/11 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 40mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/250s |
Tag Archives: Black and White
Hank Wedel and Friends in Charlies Pub Cork
Way back in 2009 we went to see Hank Wedel and other musicians play in Charlies Pub, Cork. It was a great night of music as far as I remember and it’s about time these photos see the light of day!
| Aperture | ƒ/3.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/60s |
Hank Wedel and band in the Castle Hotel, Blarney
Hank Wedel? and band at the Castle Hotel in Blarney on Sunday night. The band played a blinder despite the fact there was next to no room for them. These photos weren’t me walking up to them and sticking a camera in their faces, I had to lean back!
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 21mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/50s |
The Camel Riders
Here’s Lenny, Kevin and Eoin (l-r) of Polldaddy fame riding on camels in Marrakesh, Morocco a few weeks ago.
The ride was through wasteland adjoining a rich neighbourhood of Marrakesh where celebrities have their homes. When you hear that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are in town they’re not staying in the Medina, that’s for sure!
The wasteland was surreal. Dusty rubble strewn ground dotted with palm trees and you may see a tractor pulling a water tank for the trees. The houses for the most part are surrounded by tall walls and are gated but from the back of a camel you can look over (and see more palm trees, I guess they like their privacy!)
The camels move at walking pace, and the 3km journey took almost an hour, about twice as long as I’d like it to be but our balloon journey that morning had to be cut short so maybe they were trying to make up for that. No injuries from biting but Chris’s camel did try to take a chunk out of Lenny’s camel a couple of times.
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 21mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/125s |
Mountain Rescue Dog
In January 2007 supporters of a mountain rescue group in Cork were collecting on Patrick’s Street. This is just one of the fabulous dogs they had with them at various locations!
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/125s |
The Construction of The Grand Parade Cork
Six years ago the Grand Parade in Cork was a major building site. I can’t remember how long construction lasted but it went on for quite some time as they tore up and changed the road layout, widened the pavements and generally made the street look a hundred times better than it was before!
I’ve also posted photos of the construction before, with some of these photos appearing in older posts:
- De construction on Grand Parade
- Berwick Fountain
- Engarde construction continues in Cork
- The bike at the Library
- JCB on the street
- The Grand Parade construction site
- Construction on the Grand Parade
Seven years. That’s a long time to be running a blog and still updating it. I’ve been running Holy Shmoly! even longer but this blog is full of the photographic memories of a city and life over that period.
Most of the time taking photographs is a trade off between being there and looking through a lens. If you’re a photographer you’ll know the feeling. You may have attended a significant event but all you’ll remember was the pain of shooting at high ISO in bad light. When I can dig up old photos for a post like this it makes me glad I took my camera that day into town and snapped a few photos!
| Aperture | ƒ/13 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 20mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/160s |
Windswept in Reykjavik
One of the many buildings in Reykjavik, Iceland that are battered by the harsh weather there. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the sky here but it was quite cold when I took the photo. I think it was at the end of a short photowalk around the city centre when our fingers were numb with cold.
| Aperture | ƒ/13 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/400s |
Kilkenny Castle and Bench
Kilkenny Castle as seen from the garden in front of the building on one of the many benches lining the paths through the grounds.
I don’t have enough photos of Kilkenny on my blog. Must some more of this beautiful city.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 21mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/200s |
A woman and her phone
A young woman concentrates on her phone in a London Tube station while our train was momentarily stopped.
| Aperture | ƒ/7.1 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 40mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/100s |
Marrakesh Rooftop City
A view of some nearby rooftops and a stunning sunset over Marrakesh, Morocco. In black and white I know, but I have a few more shots of the same sky coming! This was shot from Riad O2 in the city where Polldaddy recently stayed.
In the Medina many (most?) of the houses are jam packed in next to each other. We had to take a winding alley way from the main road to the building, going left, right, left, right, left (and maybe 2 more turns?) to get there. Like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
What’s Marrakesh like? The medina is the old fortified town which is where we were staying. You’ll be woken each morning by the Muslim call to prayers as there are loud speakers dotted around the city. Currently the first one starts around 5:30am so I hope you can get back to sleep afterwards! I wasn’t too fond of heading out in the city. It’s very busy, vehicles of all sorts zoom up and down the streets. Everything from motorbikes to carts pulled by donkeys will pass you by. There are no traffic lights in the medina either and footpaths disappear without warning, if they existed at all.
The food we ate there was excellent, both in the riad and outside. Well, except for the one night we decided to sample what was on offer in the plaza. What a mistake! For the same price you’ll get a top quality meal in a fancy restaurant elsewhere!
The hot air balloon guys were super friendly and I can recommend them, the locals taking care of us in the riad were too but out on the street was another matter. Talk to anyone and they’ll either lead you to a particular area of the souk or demand a tip for “showing” you the way.
If only we could get a bit of their sun here in Ireland right now. Go on clouds, let the sun through!
Oh yes, I may have to change the tagline on this blog. This photo was processed by Adobe Lightroom. It’s not Photoshop but it’s close. I used this preset on this photo but Lightroom is really impressing me. It’s ability to recover blown out detail is amazing, the noise reduction and sharpening tools are easy and effective. The one area it really falls down in is not being able to reassign keys. I fixed that by installing Paddy which let me assign hotkeys to my two main export presets.
I imported over 23k photos into a catalogue and it’s running nice and fast. The next thing to do is write a preset and assign a hotkey to import images from my CF card.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 21mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/30s |
The London Eye
The London Eye as seen from below with my wide angle lens. It’s quite a sight to see but there are always long lines to ride it.
| Aperture | ƒ/10 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/200s |
To home on the bike
To say there are many motorbikes in Marrakesh is an understatement. We arrived at dusk and watched shell shocked as small motorbikes wove back and forth between traffic and around corners with little evident care for safety. As a pedestrian here you must have eyes in the back of your head!
With that sorted out and explained the picture above might not be too surprising and it’s a not an uncommon sight to see 3 people on a motorbike. It looks like three generations here: son leaning forward on the handlebars, mother driving and grandmother sitting on the passenger seat.
We haven’t seen any accidents yet but this old post from 2009 says accident rates are rising.
| Aperture | ƒ/7.1 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 40D |
| Focal length | 21mm |
| ISO | 400 |
| Shutter speed | 1/100s |