Tag Archives: night photography

Carey’s Lane After Dark

I was out with Blarney Photography Club during the summer and one member of the club kneeled to photograph Carey’s Lane. I went high and lifted my camera over my head to get it from a different perspective!

Carey’s Lane is one of Cork’s oldest medieval streets, originally part of the walled city that dates back to the 12th century. The narrow width and cobblestone surface are remnants of medieval urban planning, designed for foot traffic and horse-drawn carts. The modern drainage channel follows the same path that medieval gutters would have taken, showing how some aspects of urban infrastructure remain remarkably consistent across centuries.


Apertureƒ/3.5
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length24mm
ISO1600
Shutter speed1/500s

Biking Home After Dark

Someone was going to be cycling home after dark from here in Kinsale.


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length24mm
ISO5000
Shutter speed1/125s

Celestial Circles

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.


Apertureƒ/2.8
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length24mm
ISO1600
Shutter speed30s

Green Light Go

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!


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length24mm
ISO50
Shutter speed4s

Light Trails on Eamon de Valera Bridge

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.

How does photography affect your memory? Interesting podcast episode.


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length33mm
ISO50
Shutter speed8s

Night Shifts and Trailing Lights

Construction signs on Parnell Bridge in front of Cork City Hall were lit up by a passing bus a few nights ago.


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7RM5
Focal length24mm
ISO50
Shutter speed6s

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

The world in reflection

On a cold December night in 2018, I was taking photographs of reflected light in the puddles of the Docklands in Cork along with others from Blarney Photography Club.

Henry would have been on the light stick, and I’m sure I’ve posted other photos from the night, over the years as the lights are striking.


Apertureƒ/8
CameraILCE-7M3
Focal length17mm
ISO50
Shutter speed30s

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

Reflections on Wilton Terrace

A glass fronted building on Wilton Terrace is reflected in the waters of the canal in Dublin earlier this month. I thought it might be the Canadian Embassy, but Google Maps shows it’s a slightly different building.


Apertureƒ/2.2
CameraGalaxy S23 Ultra
Focal length2.2mm
ISO1600
Shutter speed1/8s