Irish Photography Websites
Spotted this sign attached to the gate at the dock on Sherkin Island recently:
Wonder what the equality ombudsman or whoever looks after that sort of malarkey would make of it… 
? Not so much a glass ceiling, more a glass windscreen, I suspect!
So there I was on a remote West Cork headland, chucking a line into the water on the off-chance of picking up a couple of passing mackerel. On the nearby pebbly beach the rest of the family were waiting eagerly for the barbecue to heat up.
View Great spots in West Cork in a larger map
Showing an insensitive, but I have to admit well founded lack of faith in my fishing prowess, our friends had brought along some fresh mackerel, just in case. We’d also packed a supply of emergency sausages, so we wouldn’t go hungry.
The fish weren’t biting, so I decided to switch the mackerel lures for a spinner and try my luck at that. As I turned I saw two people looking out to sea, obviously scouting the location for some reason.
One of them asked if I’d caught anything… which was fair enough. The other asked “Is your name Calvin?”
I was a little taken aback at being addressed by name by what appeared to be a complete stranger in a remote part of West Cork. It turns out this “stranger” was Cork Based commercial and wedding photographer Roger Overall, who I follow on Twitter, and who follows me. He’d recognised me from my Twitter profile pic, of all things.
We got chatting. Roger was out with landscape photographer @petercoxphoto scouting locations for a moonrise shoot they were planning later that evening.
After chatting with me and my Spanish photographer friend Alfredo Caliz for a little while they moved on to another location just along the coast, and we got back to the business at hand – sorting out the barbecue.
Here’s rather a fuzzy long distance crop of the two photographers in their chosen location a little way around the coast (Roger’s on the left).
And here’s the rock I was fishing from… perhaps one of the last places I ever expected to be recognised via my participation in social media.
We had a great barbecue on the beach, but had to pack up and get the kids home to bed before the moon made an appearance… you can read more about that over on Roger’s blog.
Shot from the car window in Union Hall. This fellow was feeding in the lagoon.
For such big birds (up to 1 metre in height with a wingspan pushing 2 metres) they’re incredibly nervous and skittish.
As I stopped and lowered the car window this one moved quickly away, and then took flight. This image is cropped from the full frame (handy having 12MP to play with).
The shot I’m really after is a perfect reflection of a hunting heron in glass-calm water… but it’s proving a tricky endeavour. In the meantime I quite like this shot.
It’s a weekly ritual that never seems to get any easier…
The girls tackling the sticky dilemma of picking sweets
View from our hall window the other evening… amazing light and a fabulous brooding sky. It’s a “grab shot”… but one that captures the unpredictability of the West Cork summer.
The girls next door on their way from the milking parlour. They pass right by our back wall… how’s that for country living .
There seem to be fledgling robins (Erithacus rubecula) all over the garden at the moment… exceptionally cute, noisy and pretty easy to get close to.
Slowly getting used to my Nikon D90… which is turning out to be an absolutely superb camera!
My old (10 years +) 28-200 Sigma zoom from my film SLR days, which I used for this shot, gives me 300mm at the long end with the DX sensor on the D90 (1.5 x magnification factor).
Works reasonably well, but….
I’m already hankering over better glass – need a macro, a decent wide angle and of course a long, fast (=very expensive) super telephoto for wildlife stuff.
I knew heading down the DSLR route was a bad (and potentially very expensive) idea .
Time to start saving….
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5631f957-1a01-48d0-a007-a7da2e43f042)
Spotted (groan… pardon the pun) these beautiful flowers growing on the cliff above Silver Strand on Sherkin Island in West Cork last week.
Really gorgeous – but what really amazed me was how many of them there were growing in one spot.
I was at the Cheshire Oaks outlet centre the other day and walked into the gents to find this on the wall above the urinals:
Urinals, Cheshire Oaks Outlet Centre
Priceless!
