The sun had set behind the distant hills and the exposure times went up when I took this photo, but that’s what I wanted as the sea was rough and I wanted to make it silky smooth and misty at Owenahincha Beach last August.
Last night Blarney Photography Club travelled to Owenahincha Beach to do some seascapes. We hoped to do some Milky Way photography later in the evening too but cloud cover got thicker and after some socialising in the nearby Celtic Ross Hotel we went home.
Dunquin Harbour is mostly photographed from the cliffs above because there is a narrow winding path that descends on a steep trajectory to sea level.
As I said previously in my photo of An Fear Marbh the sky was a monochrome grey but suddenly the clouds dispersed and some of the lovely light of the sunset leaked through. This is a bracketed shot I got from near sea level before rushing up the path to get a few more photos. 🙂
Dunquin Harbour served as the traditional departure point for boats traveling to the now-uninhabited Blasket Islands, with the last permanent residents leaving in 1953. The harbour’s dramatic location at the western tip of the Dingle Peninsula made it strategically important for accessing the islands, despite the challenging Atlantic conditions. The area is rich in Irish language and culture, being part of the Kerry Gaeltacht where Irish is still spoken as a community language. The distinctive rock formations visible in this photograph are part of the ancient geological structure of the Dingle Peninsula, composed primarily of Devonian sandstones and siltstones that were formed over 400 million years ago and shaped by countless Atlantic storms.
A groyne standing upright by the seashore near Youghal.
The wooden post in this photograph is part of Youghal’s coastal defence system called groynes. They are structures built perpendicular to the shore to prevent beach erosion by trapping sand moved by longshore drift. These timber groynes at Youghal are regularly maintained and replaced as part of ongoing coastal management efforts by Cork County Council. The long exposure technique used in this photograph typically requires exposure times of 30 seconds to several minutes, using neutral density filters to reduce the amount of light entering the camera, which creates the smooth, ethereal water effect by averaging out the motion of waves over time.
The sun was particularly active last weekend, promising spectacular aurora with KP values of over 7. Unfortunately, the expected nighttime display failed to materialise. Instead, I swung my camera around and took 10 30-second exposures of the night sky, with the trees of a nearby road.
After combining them in Photoshop this is what you get. Not bad for 300 seconds.
Star trails form circular patterns around the celestial pole due to the Earth’s rotation, and in the Northern Hemisphere, these circles are centred on Polaris, the North Star, which barely moves at all in the sky. I wasn’t sure where Polaris was, but it looks like it’s just off the photo.
One more from last week. This time, the long exposure shot is of a bus heading to Parnell Place in Cork. The traffic light had just turned green, so the bus was driving slowly, accelerating as it went. It made a colourful impression on the digital sensor of my camera!
Evening traffic whizzes past last week. Just after the sun had set, but the street light above my head hadn’t come on yet, so I got a nice long exposure.
Construction signs on Parnell Bridge in front of Cork City Hall were lit up by a passing bus a few nights ago.
Aperture
ƒ/8
Camera
ILCE-7RM5
Focal length
24mm
ISO
50
Shutter speed
6s
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