island life – In Photos dot Org

A Local Character in a Cretan Village

Many years ago, in 2002, I visited Crete for a sun holiday. It was the first sun holiday I’d ever been on, so quite a shock for this young man from Cork.

The photo above was taken in a small village above the resort we stayed in. The tour operator had shared ominous warnings that we weren’t insured if we went on tours with anyone else, but one of our party spotted this in a local shop, and it was booked.

I don’t remember much from the night, but there are photos, and I remember everyone got a shot of Raki after we disembarked from the bus. Bottles of the stuff were on sale too. They obviously used the good drink for the taster, because the bottle I bought tasted like it would strip paint when I got home.

I had my trusty FinePix 1300 digital camera. It was my first digital camera, and it was a great camera for the time. Here’s someone else who loved it. Lightroom tells me I took 628 photos with it. It shot 1MP images. The original photo above is 640×480. That’s all. It’s been in my TODO collection for literally decades, until modern resizing came along. I tried Topaz Photo AI, and that did a pretty good job, but then the latest beta of Photoshop has improved the “make everything gigantic” functionality, and this is what you see before you now. It’s far from perfect, but here’s the original, in all its 640×480 glory.

Middle-aged man with distinctive moustache and headband holding a small glass of red drink at an outdoor evening party in a Cretan village, with white buildings and flowering trees in the background.

Don’t pixel peep at the photo on top and it looks pretty good. IMO, anyway.

I took 4459 photos with my next camera, the FinePix 2800 Zoom. I haven’t stopped since!

Aperture	ƒ/4.5
Camera	FinePix1300
Focal length	5.8mm
ISO	125
Shutter speed	1/60s

Cape Clear’s Car Graveyard

What happens to old cars is one of the harsh realities of island life that doesn’t make it into the tourist brochures.

Getting a dead vehicle off Cape Clear isn’t as simple as calling a scrap dealer as everything has to go by ferry, which makes the economics of removal pretty grim for islanders already dealing with the higher costs of island living. It’s a stark reminder that even in Ireland’s most picturesque corners, people have to deal with the mundane realities of modern life, including what to do with that blue van that’s given up the ghost and will never make another trip to the mainland.

Cape Clear Island, located about 13 kilometres off the coast of West Cork, has a permanent population of around 120 people and faces unique challenges with waste disposal due to its remote location. All waste, including scrap vehicles, must be transported by ferry to the mainland, making disposal expensive and logistically complex. The island’s small size (just 6.5 square kilometers) means that space for storing unusable vehicles is extremely limited, leading to accumulations like the one shown in this photograph. Irish islands have lobbied for government assistance with waste disposal costs, as the expense of transporting bulky items like cars can be prohibitive for island communities with limited resources.

Aperture	ƒ/8
Camera	ILCE-7RM5
Focal length	77mm
ISO	1000
Shutter speed	1/320s

A Hidden Retreat on Sherkin Island

An old van sits in the driveway of a house on Sherkin Island, Co Cork. The barrier blocking the way is apparently used extensively on the islands off the Irish coast and in other rural areas, but I’m more familiar with seeing them in WWII films or war zones!

Aperture	ƒ/8
Camera	ILCE-7M3
Focal length	103mm
ISO	320
Shutter speed	1/125s