We visited Bantry recently, on Valentines Day, and the town was buzzing. The square was taken over by the market, which is always worth a wander around. As we ate our burritos, I spotted the sun hitting the street nearby, leaving one side in shadow, and also illuminating the countryside rising up out of the background.
It’s a busy scene, and the van in the foreground is distracting, but that’s life. Everything’s messy, and then we went for coffee and scones in the community café. Yum. 🙂
We went to see Qween perform in The Everyman theatre last night. Their performance had to be delayed because of one of the major winter storms a few weeks ago, but it was most certainly worth the wait!
They put on a great show, entertaining us all with the fabulous music of Queen, the greatest band in the world.
Definitely, if they are performing near you, go see them!
We were in Youghal recently on a cold and blustery afternoon, and so were lots of others with their dogs. Not in this photos is Diego, but he was keeping a close eye on the other dogs!
A few photos taken in Crosshaven in May 2023 when I visited there with Blarney Photography Club. A bit of fun with swirling the camera around as I took the photos.
What difference 6 years? Nothing really except they’ve removed the rubble. It’s still an ugly eye sore. They really should have put a park there if they’re not going to do anything with it.
I had some fun in Bantry today, experimenting with a new exposure mode I haven’t really used in the past, Spot Highlight. I came across it in this video made by Sean Tucker. In this mode, the camera will expose for the highlights, sacrificing shadow detail to make sure that bright areas contain detail and aren’t over-exposed.
Luckily, the sky was clear, and it was a lovely day in Bantry, so there were plenty of highlights and shadows.
The histograms of such images showed most of the data was in the shadows, for obvious reason. There were usually plenty of dark areas in those images.
I tested the new adaptive profiles in Lightroom Classic on this image too, but it brightened the shadows in a way I didn’t want it to. Luckily, you can reduce the “Amount” slider, so the effect is reduced.
I used Lightroom’s native noise reduction “enhancement” which generated a 64MB DNG from a 69MB RAW file. I was delighted when I converted that to a 3.6MB lossy DNG, and I was still able to use the adaptive colour profile!
This photo was taken inside a lovely shop called Meara & Morley in Bantry. My wife loved it. I think we’ll be returning in the future!
Last Sunday, the first Sunday in February, was a glorious one. The sun shone out of an almost cloudless sky. It was cold, but the sun brought the crowds, and there were cars parked all along the coast road, from the hotel to the nearby car park at the other end of the beach.
Adi Roche, the founder and voluntary CEO of Chernobyl Children International, was a prominent figure in Irish media for many years, tirelessly advocating for children affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Her passionate commitment to this cause left an indelible mark on countless Irish people, including myself when she visited my school in the early 1990s. Her presence was inspiring, leaving us all in awe of her dedication and humanitarian spirit.
In 2004 I photographed her on a float during the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Cork. She may have been the Marshall that year, perhaps?
The weather forecast for today was great, so we visited Inchydoney Beach this afternoon. While it looks like the beach isn’t busy, cars were parked all the way from the hotel down to the public car park at the other end of the beach. It would be easy to think it was the middle of the summer, as there were so many vehicles!
Yesterday was St. Brigid’s Day in Ireland, so it was nice to see St. Brigid’s Cross drawn on the sand, but I’d forgotten about IMBOLC. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.
Aperture
ƒ/4
Camera
ILCE-7RM5
Focal length
38mm
ISO
100
Shutter speed
1/1000s
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