I managed to be in Germany visiting my family in September when there was the most beautiful Indian Summer with warm days and cold nights.
As I stayed with my sister for a couple of days I got to walk my niece to school early in the morning – and got twice rewarded with beautiful morning fog over meadows. The first morning I only had my phone with me but for the next days I made sure to have my camera with me.
Even if autumn means long dark evenings will arrive soon – I love the autumn colours and weather.
It’s October Bankholiday weekend. Finally time for me to look through pictures again. Especially as we have an additional hour available tonight – another sign of summer being over.
I took this picture already back in August when friends from Germany visited me and we went for a walk up Killiney Hill. I always loved that balcony but on that (cold) August day it looked very lonely.
So good bye irish summer – you were a mainly cold and wet one.
This picture is an example what can go wrong in photography so it will never get printed. But nonetheless I like it so I thought I post it.
The story behind it:
Last weekend there were Dragonboat races on the Grand Canal Basin in Dublin. I was part of it together with some colleagues and friends of the co-working office where I work most days. Nonetheless I brought my camera with me but obviously didn’t concentrate purely on photography. And due to the moving subject I changed from time to time to aperture priority on my camera as oposed to manual what I usually prefer.
So being used to correct both aperture and exposure before I take a picture I stayed in the habit of changing two components and not just aperture. And ended up changing the camera correction which resulted in some very dark pictures when I forgot that I was not on manual mode.
But I liked this combination of the chinese flag representing the old tradition of Dragon Boats in front of the modern building so I worked on the levels. Usually not a big deal but in this case it resulted in unusual colours – in my eye – an effect that I nonetheless like.
The title of this post represents to me both the composition and the process so in this case I add the original (old) picture too:
This picture was taken in the library of Charleville Castle near Tullamore in Co. Offaly. This time it was a photowalk organised only via and for people on the Boards.ie Photography forum. It is an annual event and for me the second time I joined. We get basically full access and on the other hand support the renovation of the castle which is done completely by volunteers.
I wasn’t too sure what to expect going there again – other than the social aspect of these photowalks. But it was actually very good and interesting for photography too. As I knew the castle I had an better idea what I found interesting and looked at everything in a different way. So I am quite happy with my results but this one was my favourite from the beginning and still is. In this case I nonetheless link to my full set on pix.ie.
As I don’t have a macro lens I got close up lenses instead and in this case I used the +10 on my 18-55mm lens.
I got a little shock when Aafke commented earlier she was hoping for a new picture here and I saw the last post is two months ago.
I hope to go back to more frequent updates now. (I know I said similar before)
But to talk about this picture:
Today is summer solstice. Which involves two things: It is summer, there is sun and therefore it should be a lovely mild long day. Somehow that doesn’t work in Ireland this year at all. So far there was hardly a day without rain. And today was one with heavy rain. Yesterday evening I even switched on the heating again.
But Saturday week we were very lucky with our photowalk in Drogheda. We had a day full of sunshine between days of rain. So we spent some time on the stairs outside St. Peter’s Church enjoying the sunshine and the icecream. But with a camera always in your hand you tend to look around from time to time so I happened to stand sideways to the church and looked up to see this angle which I liked.
It’s one of my favourite pictures of the day, especially on a rainy day like today.
