I was trying to arrange the benches here so that the closest one is entirely in the foreground and the other three then extend backwards into the distance. I didn’t manage to get all of the near bench in the foreground but it’s still OK. I’m still in Paris – it’s amazing I expect (I wrote this on Monday), I’ll be returning to Ireland on Saturday evening.
Technorati Tags: Nikon, D300, HDR, Stephens Green, bench
Remember this guy?, the one seagull standing all lonesome? I snapped a second shot of him just as he took off – he’s the real blurry seagull closest to the lens. This was also taken by hand, with a tripod hanging out from the bottom (a D300 plus tripod is heavy!) and birds were flying everywhere – some kids were throwing bread around, stupid kids.
Technorati Tags: Nikon, D300, HDR, seagull, birds, lake, nature, dublin, stephen’s green, blurry, fast shutter speed, dynamic
Although I was trying to take all my shots using my rather flimsy tripod (I won’t name names), this lonesome seagull was too good an opportunity to miss. I had already folded up my tripod’s legs so not to look too ridiculous dragging it about so this shot was taken by hand, with a tripod hanging out the bottom! It came out surprisingly sharp – at least around the rock where I was focusing (f/5 aperture at 75mm zoom). Alas this seagull has flown away now, maybe never to be photographed again. 
I don’t really care though – I got my photo and that’s all that matters 
Ugh. I’m tired, hungry and hungover. The New Years celebrations were great but I wish I could skip the next day. Anyway, I caught this photo by chance – I was walking through Stephen’s Green in Dublin and an old lady suddenly starts throwing breadcrumbs all over the place. Within 10 seconds the ground was pigeon shaped. I stood watching, wondering if I should take out my camera and grab a shot before they had their fill. I did of course.
First post of 2009
Technorati Tags: Stephen’s Green, Dublin, pigeon, Nature, HDR, Nikon, D300, pigeons
They’re not really endless tress but I couldnt think of any other title. Actually I wonder how anyone comes up with post titles. Are they an arbitrary decision or is an abundance of time put into each post name. Mmmm I better name some hot keywords before I go: I used my Nikon D300 and five exposures at f-stops of ±2, ±1, and metered, to make this high dynamic range (hdr) photo. I used Photomatix Pro and Gimp to postprocess the images. There, that’s enough I think.
Technorati Tags: Nikon, D300, high dynamic range, hdr, Photomatix, Gimp, glenomena, ucd, university college dublin
Humans appear to put themselves under a massive amount of stress, all the time – some dash from point A to point B for something they think is very important, but in fact isn’t very important at all. Equally, others dash from point B to point A for something they think is as equally important, but is in fact as equally unimportant. Often they worry about getting stuck at point C while dashing from point A to point B, or point B to point A. Point C is any point in between points A and B.
My point is people should just relax more, like these ducks, which I present here. They are in the background at the side of the pond and don’t really feature heavily at all. I’m not sure what this post was even about.
Three cheers goes to whomever knows where the inspiration for the first paragraph comes from.
Technorati Tags: ucd lake, ucd, university college dublin
Even though my VR 18-200mm Nikkor lens’ aperture only goes to F5.6 and so doesn’t focus over very long distances, I like the contrast between the sharp blades of grass and fuzzy treeline background.
Click for larger resolution image.
Now this is the natural stance of this tree; there was no wind blowing when I took this shot. It’s a paradox in my opinion – on one hand the trunk is leaning to the right, indicating that the wind blows from the left, but looking at the leaves and branches the situation is reversed! In any case I love the overall shape the tree has – beat that anyone!
Click for larger resolution image.
My Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300
First Nikon D300 Image
UCD Library In The Morning
Blue Sky Swirls
I found a few old pictures (see Ireland Greatest Tree – Gone) on my harddrive in an obscure folder a couple of days ago. Here is one that I quite like. As far as I remember it was taken in the evening, again on my college grounds; it feels like every picture I post is in and around my college. A little side note: you can expect a lot more photos from my college over the next few weeks – I’m getting a brand spanking new Nikon D300 with a 18-200mm VR lens and I’m about to burst with anticipation! Until then I’ll continue using my trusty S9600. But I digress, back to today’s post. I’m afraid I can’t remember what setting I used when I took this photo, and I have no exif data for it, but I did run it through GIMP more recently for a touch of post post-processing. I applied a Gaussian Blur with a blur radius of 2px to soften the details in the shadows. Also, saturating the sky 40% and tweaking the curves a little has really brought out some vibrancy. Or maybe you think I cooked it a little too long? As with 99% of photos on projectVISUAL clicking on one will bring you to a higher resolution version.
Just outside my accommodation in college is a rather fantastic old tree. Perhaps not Ireland’s greatest but pretty close in my opinion. See the picture above? Have you ever seen such a magnificent specimen before? Unlikely I would say. It stands head and shoulders above all other wood plants in the area. It was one of the few pleasant sights that graced my eyes before heading into another frustrating day of college labour. Until today that is.
Before I get to the crime, here’s one more picture I found on my hard drive that I took a long time ago. There is a bit of halo-ing in the shots but I had taken them when I first started experimenting with Photomatix and would too often set the light smoothing too low, but that’s another story…
Below is the current state of the tree – a travesty in my opinion. I don’t care what reasons were given to prune with such savagery (dead branches? – no way, tree was too big? – the bigger the better I say, tree shaping? – are you kidding? I can shape better craps.)
It will probably take decades for this tree to grow back to it’s former glory and I see no benefit from its mutilation – just one of the many things in life to irk my senses.
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