I was there too
The L is the elevated train system in Chicago and many films have been filmed underneath it’s tracks, including some scenes in Batman, The Dark Knight. Here’s the L under Kimball on the brown line. I worked close by a few years ago!
| Aperture | ƒ/4.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 800 |
| Shutter speed | 1/50s |
You’re in town and desperately looking for a parking place. Where do you go? All the on-street parking has either been removed because of road works or taken by everyone who went shopping at 9am. Just look up. There’s a multi storey carpark somewhere near you. Probably.
Front of the car park on The Grand Parade. Shot after I said goodbye to Phil and the others a few weeks ago.
| Aperture | ƒ/13 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 1/400s |
I’m surprised I haven’t blogged about The GIMP FX Foundary before. It’s a huge collection of GIMP plugins that have been updated to work with the latest GIMP.
All the plugins were already available in the GIMP Plugin registry or elsewhere but not all of them survived the changes to Scheme in the latest versions of GIMP. I downloaded these plugins ages ago and recently grabbed the updated tarball with over 100 plugins. You’ll see the results of those plugins over the next few weeks as I play around with settings and effects.
I could go on and on about it, but why bother? It’s a small download and free so why not grab the zip file yourself?
Michelle was my wife Jacinta’s family cat for the last 14 years. When I say “family cat”, I of course mean, Gerry’s cat, because Gerry took special care of all the cats in the family until she got sick and the burden of care mostly fell on my father-in-law Frank’s shoulders. He will tell you himself that he was never a big fan of cats, but if you saw the care and attention he lavished on that cat it was obvious she was special to him.
Unfortunately, Michelle was almost 17 years old. Her mother Patches was a regular in the household. She had a litter of kittens and Michelle, the older sister, acted as baby sitter many a time while her mother roamed the neighbourhood searching for food. Gerry took Patches in, and Michelle wandered in crying within a week. She became a permanent fixture and never wandered away again! Of all the cats that came and went, Michelle had a special place in my wife’s heart.
We took Michelle to the vet this afternoon. This was our third visit in the last two months. She had a large tumour, her appetite had disappeared, and she was very weak. We couldn’t let her suffer any more. The vet, Stephanie, let us say our goodbyes and gently put Michelle to sleep. Michelle was very calm through out. She lay there, letting Jacinta stroke her and cup her head in her hands, as the enormity of what was about to happen sunk in. I was fine until the needle went in and then memories of my own pets came flooding back and I was as inconsolable as Jacinta. It never gets any easier.
Michelle will be missed by all who knew her.
Surprisingly I only ever posted one photo of Michelle, when she was snug in her own little home in the back garden. I really like that photo. It’s the first I posted with the Canon 50mm f1/8 lens.
I shot this through the window of our car while driving back to the ranch after Automattic’s trip to Biosphere 2 in Arizona a few months ago. I love how the foreground blurs but the background and the sky remain motionless and static. Love the movement.
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 22mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/100s |
Another cactus shot from Arizona. I’m sure this is as boring as the flower pics everyone else posts for people who live in the desert but it’s all new to me!
Black vignetting caused by a polarizer!
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/200s |
As luck would have it, one of the more famous or perhaps notorious photographers of our time, Spencer Tunick, is shooting in Blarney, where I live, tomorrow morning.
Update on Jun 8th, 2009 – I’ve justed posted a small gallery of Spencer Tunick photos as his website is down.
It’s no great secret now, even Ray D’Arcy revealed the location on his radio programme this morning. He’ll be revealing a lot more in a few hours time.. Anyway, it all happens very early in the morning, at a time when most sensible people will be snuggled up in bed and that probably includes me. If I do feel the urge to visit Blarney Castle at dawn I’m sure all I’ll photograph will be groups of dazed and tired volunteers stumbling from buses, full clothed. I have no desire to shoot any naked skin.
Spencer – if you’re reading this, I’d love to go to shoot a portrait of yourself, and perhaps grab an autograph!
There are lots of people looking for Spencer Tunick’s Blarney photoshoot!
Cacti are probably an everyday sight for people living in desert regions, but I look out the window of my office and all I see are lush green trees, an overcast sky and the threat of another shower of rain. They’re an exotic plant for me to see out growing in the open.
They also make for great black and white subjects as the spikes leave great long shadows against the low January sun. Expect more of these in the next few weeks!
A previous spikey photo is a lot different, and creepier!
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/160s |
Scary. I blogged previously about photographer’s rights in Ireland but it appears that UK Police are ignorant of those rights which are similar to Ireland’s. I have never been stopped by Gardai (the Irish Police Force) taking photos on the street, but in the UK it seems to be a growing problem for photographers. Have you ever been stopped shooting photographs in a public place?
Make sure to read Photographer’s Rights from Digital Rights Ireland to find out more about your rights as a street photographer in Ireland. If you travel you should always be aware of local laws as they’re liable to change in every jurisdiction. (via dslrblog.com)
Irish Photographers are a busy lot. There are a good few photobloggers in this country publishing photos either daily or almost daily and they’re producing some amazing stuff! Unfortunately it’s sometimes hard to find them because photoblogs don’t always lend themselves well to search engine analysis. That’s where Irish Photographers.org comes in.
Irish Photographers.org will aggregate the content from some of Ireland’s best photoblogs (the others haven’t signed up yet!) and make it easy to discover new talent. I’m quite excited by this project and the enthusiastic reaction from other photobloggers has been great!
So far there are 10 blogs contributing to the site, but that number was limited to my contacts on Twitter and by my own limited spare time to work on this. If you’d like to have your site added, go to the About page, read through the short list of guidelines and fill in the form.
The site isn’t perfect by any means, the theme could do with a bit of tweaking. It needs a favicon and a web 2.0 button would be great. Anyone want to volunteer?
PS. Don’t forget the Doneraile photowalk on June 8th! There will also be a photowalk in Dublin this weekend. If you’re not a member of Facebook, here are the details:
A photomeet at the Dublin Maritime Festival. We can meet at the Harbour Master (link below) at 1pm.
Event: June photomeet. “photomeet greatfunaltogether”
What: Festival
When: Sunday, June 1 at 1:00pm
Where: Dublin Docklands
Redmum is organising this photowalk. Just in case you’re wondering why her blog isn’t included on Irish Photographers.org, it’s for technical reasons; blogger doesn’t offer per-category feeds unfortunately. She’s working on a solution so hopefully she’ll be contributing soon!
PPS. Cork City Marathon is on June 2nd. I hope to be there. Leave a comment if you think you will too!
Ever since I posted Short Circuit I’ve been meaning to post a small tutorial on how I did it. There were so many comments from people clamouring to know the secret of how I made traces of light dance around the picture frame.
Actually, nobody asked. Will was kind enough to suggest another title but otherwise it went unremarked. *sob* I’m going to tell you anyway.
The image is a long exposure shot, of at least 1 second and preferably 4 or 5 seconds. I simply stood in front of a construction site at night, lifted the camera, hit the shutter and rotated the camera around in my hands. Needless to say, I did not have the strap around my neck or I would have done myself damage!
At first I tried Aperture Priority mode, setting the aperture really small (big numbers, around F/22), but then I decided to do the obvious, and used Shutter Priority and simply set the speed(time) I wanted. Below are a few shots from that night, including the scene as it was on the night and some experimental shots as I practiced. The technique is really easy, but can create some really interesting and eye catching photos.
| Aperture | ƒ/3.5 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 800 |
| Shutter speed | 1/10s |
The month of June is going to be a busy and exciting one as the Midsummer Festival will be in full swing! To avoid clashes with any other event I think it’s better if the photowalk in Doneraile, Co. Cork be on Sunday June 8th before it starts at all.
Where: Doneraile Park, Co. Cork.
When: Sunday, 8th June. 3pm
Directions: Leave Cork going north through Blackpool towards Blarney and Mallow. Pass through Mallow and keep on the main road until you get to “New Twopothouse”. Doneraile town is sign posted there so take a right. When you get to the town go through it to the other side. You’ll see Doneraile Park sign posted. See the Google Map above, or check this one for the route.
Doneraile Park is a beautiful park with at least one river running through it, a small weir near the carpark. Deer and livestock can often be seen in some areas of the park as can fowl like ducks or swans. Doneraile House overlooks a large part of the park and is famous because a member of that household was the only female Freemason. The house was closed the last time I was there and I’m not sure if it’s ever open to the public. It faces north from what I can remember so you’d have to be there before noon to catch any sun on the front of the house.
If you’re going to blog about this, or post photos afterwards, please tag them “corkphotowalk” so anyone interested can find them easily!
More:
If you can’t make it to Doneraile on the 8th, there’s still plenty happening in the weeks after as the festival starts on the 15th and continues for 3 weeks. I’m particularly interested in the following, mainly because they’re outdoors, and as they are in public places, photography won’t be a problem.
I almost forgot. The Cork City Marathon is on Monday, June 2nd. Grab your place at the finish line!
Phew. It’s going to be a busy month!
