A man reading in the first floor window of a building on MacCurtain Street, Cork. May 13th, 2012.

Christmas is upon us again and the lights and decorations are going up around the city. This is on Patrick’s Street, Cork a few days ago when we wandered around.

The Sun shone on the underside of the clouds this morning, lighting them up in a blaze of glory. Moments later the gloom had settled in, the Sun disappeared and an hour later the rain had started. Ah well.

Fog covers the village of Blarney at the merest hint of a calm chilly morning and today was no exception. These are the trees across the road from my son’s school.

It’s a beautiful frosty morning so I couldn’t resist the urge to take a couple of shots of this driveway up to Blarney Castle. You may even recognise it from the WordPress theme Twenty Ten.

If you have an external flash (and this even applies to the onboard flash but that’s a lot weaker) for your DSLR try shooting with the camera in manual mode and let the flash light the scene for you. Canon flash units use E-TTL to figure out what power to use, Nikon and other manufacturers…

A bell attached to the ruins on the small island at Gougane Barra in Co Cork. I have no idea what the 1025 on the bell means, anyone know?

The London Underground, March 2012.

Some of the seats in the Everyman Palace, Cork. It’s been ages since I saw anything there but it’s a great venue. PS. I hardly had to process this photo, not worth putting a before pic this time!

Detail from the wheel of a VW Beetle parked in an iron smith’s yard in Oracle, Arizona. This was taken in 2008 when Automattic visited there and I have quite a few other photos from that visit to show you, if I ever get around to working on them that is! This was taken with…

Not an old car but ye olde styled as was the fashion a couple of years ago. Stands out against more modern vehicles of course.

Two swans swam curiously over to us at the Lough, Cork a few months ago.