It snowed for about half an hour this morning. Ironically, the country could do with a heavy snow to encourage less travel.
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 24mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/80s |
Tag Archives: Sony A7 III
Look up at Trees
Unwrap the Building
Blarney Castle in the Autumn
The red cobbles
The new Shaky Bridge (Shakey Bridge?), or Daly’s Bridge, is a huge improvement over the old. The lighting makes it stand out, and it still has the shakes like the old one!
I love the cobbles on the ground nearby but the ugly concrete support under the walkway up to it leaves something to be desired. 🙁
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 16mm |
| ISO | 320 |
| Shutter speed | 4s |
A Bright Spot in the Garden
Sun Shines Through the Trees
The sun has set on 2020 and I finish the year with what is probably my favourite photo of the year.
The sun shines through trees heavy with Autumn coloured leaves, not yet touched by the harsh winter winds back in October this year. Photo made in the grounds of Blarney Castle where I expect to take many more walks since we are only allowed exercise within 5km of home. That remains in place until the end of January because of rising Covid19 numbers in the country. Third lockdown of the year unfortunately.
I have made roughly half the number of photos I normally shoot in a year. In April I took one photo with my camera. The number of photos I took with my phone wasn’t much different from previous years but I know for certain that I took many more photos of my cats and dog this year!
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 70mm |
| ISO | 800 |
| Shutter speed | 1/160s |
Sunset on 2020
A Robin at the Castle
HDR in ON1 Photo RAW 2021 vs Lightroom
I got an email from On1 again this morning offering a free trial of the latest version of their raw processor. Since I just paid for another year of Adobe Lightroom I’m not going to switch but every year ON1 Photo RAW gets better and better.
I took loads of bracketed photos at Blarney Castle yesterday so I decided to test out the HDR feature in Lightroom and On1 Photo RAW 2021. Last year I was not impressed when I tested this but the end result this time was very pleasing. ON1 created a slightly brighter, paler image with less contrast than Lightroom which I prefer. If you’re a Lightroom user you should definitely try the free trial of ON1 Photo RAW!
I upload my photos to Google Photos too. It generates HDR images from uploaded files. The HDR images tend to be too colourful and look like the HDR images created when HDR was a new thing and people were a little too enthusiastic about it. Here’s what Google Photos made of the same set of images.
In this totally unscientific and simple test I like the HDR created by ON1 Photo RAW the best!
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 16mm |
| ISO | 100 |
| Shutter speed | 1/60s |
The Disappearance of Fungie
The disappearance of a single solitary dolphin in the year 2020 would seem to be small news among the horrible things that have happened this year. The pandemic is still raging. Ireland is in lockdown again. People are dying from Covid-19.
However, on October 20th it was reported that Fungie, a dolphin that first appeared in Dingle Bay, Co Kerry in 1983 was missing for 7 days.
For as long as I’ve been aware of Dingle, it has been synonymous with Fungie. He was hard to miss as there’s a statue in the town, and several boats lined the quays ready to take visitors out to see the friendly dolphin.
I went out once in 2017, and I saw him break the surface a few times but he wasn’t in the mood for playing at the time. You should have seen the packed boats of tourists trying to grab a glimpse of him. Thankfully our boat wasn’t as busy!
The last time I saw him was in August this year. My family and I walked out to Hussey’s Folly on a glorious evening where we sat in the grass watching the water, accompanied by several boats and kayakers.
There was the occasional shout when someone spotted him, and the delighted laughs and exclamations made it all worth it.
The next night we walked out by the small beach at Bín Bán. As night fell we heard splashes in the still water and spotted Fungie swimming back and forth just ten to twenty metres from shore. All was quiet. There was only my family and a passer-by around. It was very special hearing his splashes in the water.
Paddy Ferriter, keeper of the old lighthouse pictured above, was the first person to spot Fungie in 1983. He tells his story in a short clip here:
My photos of Fungie don’t do him justice. Follow these links for more:
Washington Post article on his disappearance.
There are wonderful videos of Fungie on this Facebook page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7sEG6WhPM
| Aperture | ƒ/8 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 300mm |
| ISO | 250 |
| Shutter speed | 1/320s |
Queue for the Whopper
Last month in Burger King, St. Patrick Street, Cork.
| Aperture | ƒ/4 |
| Camera | ILCE-7M3 |
| Focal length | 18mm |
| ISO | 5000 |
| Shutter speed | 1/500s |