A very happy crew member of the Köln when she docked in Cork in 2005. Now that I’ve archived my photo collection to DVD (only 41 DVDs for 2009 so far!) I’m converting RAW files to Jpeg to reduce the insane storage requirements of 179GB of data for 2009 alone. As an example, I squashed…

Members of the crew of the F480 Comandante João Belo as the ship was known in 2005. In 2008 it was sold to Uruguay, with official transfer on 8th April 2008, renamed ROU-01 URUGUAY.

Flash back to 2005 if you will. Ireland is in the grip of the Celtic Tiger boom. Cork is undergoing a transformation. The city’s streets were dug up and remolded with apparently improved drainage (didn’t help recently unfortunately) and the revamping of the city centre was in full swing. Here’s the construction on Daunt Square,…

Crewmen on the Fregatte Köln when it visited Cork in 2005 kept a close eye on me, Ryan and AJ as we photographed every inch of the ship we could see. Looking back over these photos reminds me that this was the day the cheap memory card I used at the time failed on me…

The Chicago Theatre on State Street in the city of the same name. The sign in front is hard to miss but I’ve never been in there. Maybe next time I visit Chicago. More info on the theatre’s history page. Love that Netscape favicon! This was shot in 2005 but I know I have shot…

Barack Obama’s family probably had some help from America’s Secret Service when they moved from Chicago to Washington but for the rest of us, that journey would be a lot more mundane and would involve the services of a company like Hollander. Photographed somewhere in Chicago in May 2005. PS. Thank you if you nominated…

Construction work on the Trump Tower in 2005.

Marina City, the round shaped buildings in Chicago that sit on the river make an imposing sight when viewed up close. Good thing there’s valet parking, you certainly wouldn’t want to be scared of heights driving around inside them!

I’m reliably informed that many women enjoy the occasional trip to shoe shops and other establishments were garments and other finery may be purchased. Thankfully my wife isn’t one of them and hates shopping almost as much as I do. Nevertheless we found ourselves inside this shoe shop in Chicago so I decided to make…

Despite being a major city, or perhaps because of it, Chicago has plenty of open spaces and broad streets. I love this shot for it’s wide open space bordered by tall buildings. If the photo looks slightly odd, that’s because I used the perspective tool, but never dragged it the other way..

When I originally took this photo in Chicago (on La Salle, near the CBOT) it was a snapshot of a film crew. I took a few more shots of the crew but I was intrigued by the camera. Panaflex, what’s the specs on that then? Turns out it’s a product of Panavision, you know, that…

In 2001 Donald Trump announced he’d build the tallest building in the world in Chicago, “Trump International Hotel and Tower”. After the attacks on the WTC in September that year the plans were changed however, but it’s still an awfully high building. Check out the Wikipedia page for further details. This is the building site…