Trácht ar Mhalairt Slí

If the road works, why are there signs pointing out where diverted traffic goes?

Did you know that most street signs in Ireland are bilingual? As Gaeilge on top and English below.

Thanks Henry, for the company last night. A good spot to do long exposure photography.

Oh, here’s something interesting about this photo. It’s made of two images I had to merge together in Photoshop because my long exposure shot wasn’t long enough. Two 4 second shots of a slowly moving bus on a corner.

Set the layer type of the top layer to “screen” and the lights in the air come through.

The resulting tiff file was 318.7MB. That’s a monstrosity for a simple image so I converted it to DNG which resulted in a 233.3MB file, and then to lossy DNG. That squeezed it down to 7.5MB! Not bad for a 9417×6278 image.

I couldn’t see any difference in image quality. There were slight differences when I clicked the auto Transform button, but nothing major.

Original & Lossy


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length29mm
ISO50
Shutter speed6s

Steel Wool Spinning at Night

Spinning flaming steel wool around creates fiery trails in the air. Thanks Henry, for this photo I took in 2015!


Apertureƒ/4
CameraCanon EOS 6D
Focal length40mm
ISO50
Shutter speed13s

Milky Way Over the Costa Brava

In July 2022, I was in Llafranc and wondered if I’d be able to photograph the Milky Way. Dark skies maps of the area showed glowing lights all along the coast, and it seemed unlikely, but I wandered down to the beach one night to try. I was pleased with the result because there was no way I could see anything like this with my bare eyes! There was too much light around.


Apertureƒ/4
CameraILCE-7M3
Focal length16mm
ISO6400
Shutter speed20s

A Hotel on the Rocks

A hotel on the coast of Tenerife on Playa de Ajabo looks out on the Atlantic as waves batter the rocks underneath. They’re turned into mist by a long exposure photo in this evening shot, about 20 minutes after the sun has set.


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length24mm
ISO100
Shutter speed3.2s

Disco Forest Fantasia

Exactly a month ago, I ventured out with Blarney Photography Club to see Wonderlights at Fota House. The grounds were transformed into something straight out of a cyberpunk fairy tale. This particular shot caught my eye – a grove of trees bathed in blues and magentas, with disco balls dangling from gnarled branches like some sort of woodland rave.

The fog machines were working overtime, creating this ethereal atmosphere that had me half expecting to see digital faeries emerge from behind the trunks. It’s amazing what a few well-placed lights can do to transform these old trees into something so otherworldly. I shot this at ISO 100 for a lengthy eight second exposure with my tripod, and I was thrilled with how it came out.


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length24mm
ISO100
Shutter speed8s

Cork’s Christmas Commotion

Nollaigh Shona Dhaoibh go léir! Now that no more shopping is possible, maybe we can return to normality. Of course, in cold and dreary January, we might look back with nostalgic eyes at the bright lights, decorations, and all the stress excitement.


Apertureƒ/18
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length208mm
ISO100
Shutter speed5s

The Car Park’s Secret Disco Portal

The big wheel on Grand Parade in Cork spins and makes a lovely shape when captured by a long exposure shot. Also missing from this are a few friends who thankfully kept walking back and forth so they wouldn’t be captured in the image!


Apertureƒ/6.3
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length33mm
ISO250
Shutter speed8s