Children of Lir

The Children of Lir is an Irish legend that we all learn and read about growing up. The basic premise of the story is that the 4 children of King Lir are turned to swans by their jealous stepmother and forced to roam the lakes of Ireland for 900 years.

There is a statue on the median on Dame St in Dublin commemorating the story and because of the traffic flowing through the area, its an interesting area to do long exposures and capture light trails.

Children of Lir

This first shot is a 13 second exposure in which I tried to capture the traffic moving in both directions. 

Children of Lir

This second shot is a 6 second exposure and I was lucky to catch a bus moving across the frame, while crossing the road, giving a really interesting effect. The long exposure gives the water from the fountain a nice milky look. 

I have previously written a post on how I shoot light trails and if your interested in trying them out, you should give it a read. 

Nik Dfine

I recently downloaded the trial version of Nik's Dfine software and after 2 days I had to buy it. This software is incredible and for the money really boosts the range of my entry point SLR - the Nikon D3000.

Previously when using this camera in low light, with a 35mm 1.8 I still had to push the ISO up to 800 to get, for me, an acceptable shot. This little camera is great and I love it but pushing its ISO to 1600 or Hi 1 always gave me pictures that I wasn't happy with. But since I got this software, my perspective has changed. I'm now going over some of my old shots and recovering them and making prints that I love.

 London Eye - Before Nik Dfine

Londen Eye - After Nik Dfine

This shot was taken handheld with my 35mm 1.8 at ISO 800. I really liked the photo and after applying Nik Dfine, the print I made at 8x10 looked fantastic. 

New Orleans Musician - Before Nik Dfine

New Orleans Musician - After Nik Dfine

This shot was taken in a Bar in New Orleans, this guy playing was amazing. I took this at ISO 1600 and after processing with the software it really picked this photo up. 

So if your having some trouble with noise in your photos I highly recommend downloading the 15 day trial of Nik Dfine and give it a shot. 

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Shoot for the Moon!

The Moon

There is nothing like looking up at the sky and seeing a full moon on a cloudless night. For as long as the moon has been orbiting the earth it has had a huge influence on our planet and captured the imagination of man. Capturing the moon in a photo isn't too difficult either but there is one key thing you must remember and that is the light on the moon is sunlight so you need to expose properly. 

I took the shot above with my camera mounted on a tripod and at 200 mm. Ideally you'd use a longer lens but that is the longest in my current arsenal. I had the camera set on manual and set to f/8 with a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second. ISO was set to 100 to keep the noise to a minimum. 

This shot is heavily cropped because of the focal length used but the detail in the image is still remarkable. So next time you have a clear night, go take a photo of the moon, its quite a satisfying experience and when you go back and look at the photo and the detail you've captured, it'll always put a smile on your face. 

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My Favourite Flower

I've always enjoyed taking pictures of flowers, something about the deliberation, setting up and the time it takes setting and taking the photo really appeals to me. In the year I've been taking photos with a lot of care, I've paid more attention to the changing of the seasons and how our garden and city parks change.

This photo of a water lily is one of my favourite flowers I've captured. I was on holidays in Bordeaux, France so didn't have all my gear with me. We were wandering around the Jardin Public and behind the botanic gardens we came across this lily in a pond. I kneeled down and set my ISO to 800 so I could get a faster shutter speed. An aperture of 9 kept the green leaves enough in focus to my liking. I set the white balance to cloudy in post to warm up the photo. The colours of the lily, I found to be quite unusual and I often find myself coming back to view this photo. So as the title suggests, this is my favourite flower photo, so far....

Sold My First License

 

Samuel Beckett Bridge and Convention Centre, Dublin  .

Nearly a year to the day since I started shooting with my DSLR and I sold my first license. It all came about in an unexpected way. I have many photos on flickr and I recieved a flickr mail from a website designer in Cork who was looking for an image of the Samuel Beckett bridge in Dublin. We emailed back and forth for a few days working out a price based on how the image would be used etc. This was a really new thing for me so I consulted websites including Getty (which suprisingly has no images of the Beckett bridge) and Current Photographer and I'm still not sure if I priced appropriately.

Yesterday the cheque arrived and the photo is now up on the 'Franc in the city' website. I was amazed at how easy the whole process was and of course was very chuffed to have my photo selected and used. The whole event really highlighted the importance of keywording all your photos so they can be found. Now I must finished tagging all my smugmug photos.

Story of the shot - Frog Reflections

Frog Reflections

One of the most common pieces of advice I hear and read to get better photos is to change the angle. Reach high, get down low, don't just shoot from eye level. That piece of advice ran through my head as I visualised this shot. I was walking through my girlfriends garden when I noticed two frogs in the pond. They seemed to be resting and as I watched they didn't move at all. The view gave me the impression of old Roman statesmen relaxing in the bathes contemplating affairs of state. I took a few shots of the frogs but wasn't overly happy with them. 

So I grabbed my long lens, my 55-200 and lay flat on my stomach beside the pond. I tried to steady myself as much as possible and fired off a few shots handheld. A few came out and in others the focus plain shifted so that plants and not the frogs head that was in focus. When I loaded the image onto my laptop I was delighted to see that the frogs reflection had been preserved and I feel like that contemplative mood I picked upon from the scene was preserved in the photo. A little cropping and sharpening in Aperture and this is the final image. 

Changing the angle gave me the photo that I wanted and it's something I always try to remember when visualising a shot now. 

You can view this photo on flickr too.

D

World Aids Day

The 1st of December 2010 is World Aids Day. A day to raise awareness of an affliction which affects over 33 million people globally. To mark the event a number of world landmarks are to be lit up with red lights. Here in Dublin, the new convention centre changed its usual rainbow coloured lights to all red.

Dublin Convention Centre

You can find out more information on World Aids Day here and see the Convention Centre when it first opened here.

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