irishblogs – Page 238 – In Photos dot Org

Alcatraz 2E 53 45

A vintage 1940’s truck with the license plate number, “2E 53 45” sits under an archway on the Island of Alcatraz. It’s a beautifully restored vehicle that attracts the attention of all tourists as they walk past.

Here’s a few more pictures of the truck but I’m surprised nobody has posted the registration plate of the truck! I love the variety of textures in this image.

First snow of the year fell today! It’s not sitting on the ground, but it’s nice to watch from inside. It’s not so nice walking about in it. Even Oscar didn’t want to go out, but the call of nature won out on his reluctance!

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	800
Shutter speed	1/15s

Bay Bridge Reflections

Bay Bridge Reflections

Light from the Bay Bridge in San Francsico shimmers in the waters of the harbour. To the left one of the fire fighting boats of the SF Fire Department can be seen.

Posting this landmark of San Francisco today as most of the rest of Automattic make their way to Mexico. Here’s another shot from another night near the bridge.

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	2s

The BMW Mini – NCT 5

The BMW Mini – NCT 5

A white mini parked on the sidewalk in suburban San Francisco.

Aperture	ƒ/7.1
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/100s

The little red door

The little red door

A small house is stuck between two larger buildings in Dingle, Co. Kerry. I’m not sure what caught my eye in the first place but I think it was the red door.

Shot on a wet morning that brightened up after an hour of intense rain.

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1/400s

The swans they are a coming

The swans they are a coming

Swans rush to the bank of the Lough looking for bread from the crazy guy hanging over the water with a large black object…

This shows off one of my favourite night-time techniques. Long exposure with a flash. The long exposure captures the background while the flash illuminates the foreground objects, along with some nice movement blur.
It works really well at parties when people are dancing, especially if you’re lucky to capture a laughing face while the body is in motion.

Aperture	ƒ/4
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	10mm
ISO	200
Shutter speed	1.6s

Scary! Scary! Google forgets In Photos

I wondered why traffic was slow to the site today and then I searched for donncha. Insted of this site being the second or third link it’s nowhere to be found. I know it’s only a Google hiccup that other blogs have experienced too of late but it’s frightening watching my logs. They’re not moving, much.

You can practically hear the tumbleweed blowing across the screen it’s so quiet.

Much later .. I figured out what caused the problem. It was my Google sitemap. The “R&H Hall” tag caused a problem because it wasn’t encoded properly. Adding a urlencode() around the right bit of code fixed that. Must tell the author of UTWgoogleSitemaps…

Getting started with Bibble Labs

I’ve been using Bibble Labs Pro for a few months now to process my RAW files but I know I’m not using it to it’s fullest potential.

I should have looked around the Bibble website because their learning center has a number of videos to help the Bibble newbie!

Bibble Support Forum
Bibble Learn Center – with the following videos: Getting started, Basic tools, Advanced Workflow, Heal and Patch introduction.
Support FAQ
Bibble Documentation

Things I don’t like:

I can’t believe there’s still no single-step undo in Bibble. It’s either CTRL-R to reset the image settings back to the RAW format, or there’s an awful workaround by copy/pasting the whole image before major actions.
Bibble crashes. It usually only happens when saving an image. I have noticed that it happens most often when I change virtual desktop so there’s probably a bug there somewhere.

Despite those misgivings, it’s still worth looking at the trial version.

The Moonlit Shipyards

The Moonlit Shipyards

The shipyards in Rushbrooke, just outside Cobh are still active although much quieter now than during their heyday. The cranes make for great photography against the moonlit sky.

This was shot from across the River Lee in Passage last November.

FRLinux asked about settings so here they are, including post-processing:

Flickr’s exif data for this is a bit wrong – gthumb says the exposure was for 5 seconds, aperture was wide open at f4.5, and lens set at 28mm, which you can probably multiply by 1.6 for the crop factor. ISO was 100.

Post Processing was done in the GIMP using 3 layers:
1. Top layer is transparent with a black gradient at the bottom. Layer mode is Overlay.
2. Middle layer is black and white, and blurred and with added noise. It’s set to screen mode, and opacity of 51%.
3. Bottom layer is the colour image, slightly saturated and darker.

Hope that helps!

Aperture	ƒ/4.5
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	28mm
ISO	100
Shutter speed	5s

Golden Gate Bridge in Fog

Golden Gate Bridge in Fog

Tourists on a ferry pass by the fog shrouded Golden Gate Bridge
in San Francisco Bay.

The day was beautiful out near Alcatraz but fog covered the upper reaches of the bridge and I thought would make a pleasing shot.

PS. I’m not finished with photos from 2006 by a long shot!

Aperture	ƒ/13
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	200mm
ISO	100
Shutter speed	1/800s

Unhappy Child

Unhappy Child

A small girl walks mournfully into the shopping center on Paul Street clutching her “BT Kids” balloon, probably handed to her by this lady.

Aperture	ƒ/5.6
Camera	Canon EOS 20D
Focal length	162mm
ISO	400
Shutter speed	1/100s

Who else wants a Canon 6D?

Chris Garrett speculates that the Canon 6D will be announced in February. Time will tell, but what extra features will it have and will they be worth the premium a camera demands?

If I didn’t have a good collection of APS-C lenses already I might be tempted to go out and buy a Canon 5D, especially if it’s being discounted. Tempted if I had wads of cash falling out of my pockets that is and not budgeting for a new arrival in April! “But honey, I really want to take the best possible pictures of our baby!” Has that ever worked?

Whatever happens, I’m sure I’ll be lusting after a new camera before long.

Have you seen the price reductions on the Canon 5D lately? This is usually a good signal that a replacement is coming. All the hot news of late has been in the APS-C area, suspiciously quiet if you ask me. You could say that would mean a new flagship is required but if I was Canon I would announce a 1D beating 6D, then top it with a new top end pro unit. The other way round makes less sense to me.

Panoramic Traffic Lights

Panoramic Traffic Lights

Traffic along the Mallow Road hurries past on a cold and foggy December night. This was taken from the bridge near Rathpeacon and Killeens.

The bridge itself as you can see from the map above is much wider than the one in this picture but I wasn’t going to stand in the middle of a dark road at risk of being knocked over for my art. At least not this time anyway!

Traffic from the right is coming from Cork, while traffic from the left is coming from the direction of Mallow or Blarney.

PS. Nominations for the Irish Blog Awards are now open. There are several categories and you can nominate your favourite Irish blog in whichever one fits. In Photos won Best Photoblog last year but this is the only time I’ll mention the awards here unlike last year when I did the dog on it a bit! (Not that I wouldn’t mind winning again of course!)

I like these: Snow Squalls! and Palm House – I wish more photoblog software understood trackbacks and pings. It’s hard to start a conversation with them.