Paul Street by night

In front of Tesco on Paul Street, Cork by night. This is a long exposure show I made by putting my camera on the ground and leaning the lens on my wallet.

Judging by the lighting it was probably a small aperture too. Love that effect!

Aperture ƒ/16
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 4s

Construction cranes at night

Cranes over the construction site at the old Guy and Company site make for a striking image at night.

This was taken from the Tesco multi-storey car park, a few metres away from where I shot Clouds move at night.

Yesterday we had to bring the car for a service so I took the opportunity to travel to visit the framer in Kilbrittain and sign the border of the prints Haydn has made. The prints look great, they’re raised up from the background border and will eventually be framed in a deep frame. I hope to post photos of my visit in the next few days if I get the time to work on the photos.

Aperture ƒ/13
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 30s

Children on the merry-go-round

Children smile and laugh as the fairground ride goes around and around! Linda and myself spent a good few minutes shooting this ride.

I combined a long exposure and flash to capture the action and hoped to get a glimpse of a child’s smile. I think I was lucky to get this one!

Aperture ƒ/7.1
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/25s

Clouds move at night

Clouds fly across the sky in this nighttime shot of Cork City. A crane is in the middle distance, practically a symbol of the City at this stage.

The building site in the foreground is on the old site of the Guy And Company building. There’s St. Anne’s Church or Shandon Bells in the distance.

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 10s

Around this way, not that way

Drivers can be so confused by road signs. Drive this way, drive that way. Those roundy signs with the big numbers surrounded by a red border must be the worst offenders, I mean, hardly anyone obeys them. What were they thinking when they put them up can anyone tell me?

Head on over to shitedrivers.com if you want to rant. You’ll be very welcome there!

Oh, this was taken in Wilton, Cork. Anyone from the city will recognise this I’m sure!

Aperture ƒ/5.6
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/60s

Light trails on Oliver Plunkett Street

Light trails from a passing car leave their mark on this long exposure shot of Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork.

Can you see pink lights on the vertical poles standing at the edge of the pavement? On my Linux box they’re clear as day but I can’t see them at all in Preview on the Macbook.

The lights were designed and made by MAAS here in Cork and the colour changes slowly from blues to purples to pinks to yellow and to any other colour. It’s quite a sight to see the colour change when standing at one end of this long straight street!

Aperture ƒ/11
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 100
Shutter speed 8s

A shark at Kay O’Connell’s fishmongers

A shark’s deadly grin greeted customers to the fishmongers in the English Market on the day this photo was taken.

Don’t you just love the expression on the fishmonger’s face?

PS. Claire took some great portraits on Saturday!

Aperture ƒ/8
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 1600
Shutter speed 1/125s

From the old hospital to the new

In stark contrast to the newly built Cork University Maternity Hospital this was taken in one of the older ones. If you look carefully you can read the notice on the wall which starts, ‘Central Sterile Supply Department’. This building is in a state of disrepair you’d hardly expect in a flourishing economy like Ireland but the public health services are underfunded and top heavy with too many managers and money is siphoned off into over-budget projects.

Part three of my old hospital series.

In other news, midwives voted against moving to the new maternity hospital in Cork from the three maternity hospitals in the city. The new hospital will be understaffed when it opens however, with staff numbers apparently being made up of unqualified porters, janitors and other personnel. The move was supposed to happen an hour ago, but has been set back to 4pm though doubts remain as to whether it’ll open at all today.

Aperture ƒ/3.5
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 18mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1/8s

Escalator Moments

A one second exposure captures the movement through time of the escalator in Nikeworld San Francisco last August. This is one of a series of shots, including a few of Mark and Andy although I think this is the most dramatic of them.

I wasn’t going to post this at all except that a few days ago another escalator photo made the front page of Digg somehow. Digg away please 🙂

Aperture ƒ/16
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 1.3s

The lonely swan

A solitary swan swims on the calm waters of The Lough as the sun disappears at the end of the day.

Believe it or not, this is a 10 second exposure that turned out much better than I could have hoped! I balanced my camera on the edge of the Lough, set it to Aperture priority mode at f/11, dialed the exposure down two stops, flipped up the camera flash and took the shot.

How does this work?

  • By setting the aperture to a fairly high value little light is let into the camera sensor.
  • By setting the exposure down two stops the whole scene will be underexposed but bright areas will be exposed mostly correctly.
  • Given the above settings, any dark moving objects will be completely invisible so when the flash fired it picked out the swan swimming past and even created a nice reflection in the water.

Hope that helps!

Aperture ƒ/11
Camera Canon EOS 20D
Focal length 10mm
ISO 200
Shutter speed 10s

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 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