Tag Archives: Candid

Humour on the Street

Humour on the street was the subject of the latest Cork Street Photography Meetup. While I didn’t actually meet any of the group in town as I was with my son I did get a few photos, and one qualifies as humorous. 🙂

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 6D
Focal length 24mm
ISO 250
Shutter speed 1/320s

Eleven Years Apart

Eleven Years Apart

The photos above were shot eleven years apart. The first was shot in 2004 while the second was shot only a few weeks ago in early February, 2015. You may recognise the man. He sells newspapers in the St. Augustine’s Church, on the corner of Washington Street and Grand Parade. I presented him with a print of both photos and I think he was quite taken with them. Unfortunately I didn’t get his name while I talked with him as a customer came along but I’ll ask him next time!

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera CYBERSHOT
Focal length 9.7mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/50s

Lean on the Wall

Just outside the English Market, Grand Parade, Cork.

Street photography is hard. It’s difficult to shoot candid photos of people on the street and get a picture in focus that is pin sharp.

To aid me in that task I used the auto ISO setting on my camera, with a minimum shutter speed of an excessively fast 1/250 sec and I kept the aperture at f/8 which gives a greater depth of field at the expense of light entering the lens.
That means more of the photo is in focus, even if my lens focuses on the wrong subject, but the higher ISO makes the photo noisier. It certainly paid off when I shot from the hip as I did in this photo. Oh, and you need balls too.

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 6D
Focal length 35mm
ISO 1250
Shutter speed 1/250s

An Garda

A member of An Garda Síochána directed traffic in Blarney last night when Santa visited and the lights were turned on in the village.

This is a long exposure zoomed shot, of about one second duration with the flash firing at the end of the exposure.

To replicate:

  • Make sure you set your flash to “second curtain”. Use Google to find out how on your brand of flash. Normally the flash will fire at the start of an exposure.
  • Have the lens at it’s widest zoom.
  • Set the camera to one second exposure in shutter priority mode (Tv on Canon cameras, S on others) or use manual mode with an aperture as wide as possible.
  • Line up your subject, hit the shutter button and slowly zoom in.

If you’ve timed it right the flash will fire when you’re zoomed in right. They’ll be lit by the flash and any background lights will appear as streaks going towards them. It’s hard to get right and not overexpose your subject so keep practising!

Aperture ƒ/13
Camera Canon EOS 6D
Focal length 20mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1s

Public Display of Affection

St Patrick’s Street, Cork during the Street Performance World Championships yesterday. Does anyone know who this performer is?

I can’t really comment on any of the performers unfortunately as I was only there for an hour with a bored six year old who had a fixation on buying an Angry Birds hat and balloon animals. There were huge crowds too which meant kids had to at the performance before it started to get a place in front.

I’m glad I caught this moment.

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:

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
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