Night over Ballinskelligs

The plough

Waterville lights

Ballinskelligs castle at night

Just before the camera club meeting tonight I´ve taken a few photos of the scenery and sky over Ballinskeligs. The half moon was brightening up the clouds and landscape and the stars were very well to see. I took the photos with iso200 and 400, f 1.8 to 2.2 with a shutterspeed of 25 seconds in manual settings. You need to focus manual to infinity and a sturdy tripod is great help, try it  in the next few nights, but stay away from the moon, its to bright.                                        South Kerry is a great location for night photography due to its minor light pollution.

Long Shutterspeed

Here are some samples of photos that I took during the week using long shutterspeed. For landscape photos you need a tripod, to be independent from any lightsituation. The long shutterspeed allows you to show movement of water, clouds, carlights in contrast to static structures like the rocks in the water. The evening time after sunset is a good time to practise long shutterspeed. It is important to know that most cameras have a limit of the longest shutterspeed of 30 seconds. If you need a longer shutterspeed use the B-setting on your camera and a cable release.
p.s. the photo inside the car was taken as a passenger not as a driver, thanks Franz for the chance to try this.

Valentia Island, County Kerry, Seascape Photography

Her are some photos from this part of our "wonderful world" as Louis Armstronng and Robert Wyatt used to sing, and the reason why I missed the first hour of "The Blue of the Night" on Lyric FM . But I´ll be there again Thursday night with the Camera Club.

Stormy days in Ireland

You hear a lot of talk about changes in Ireland recently. I went to Valentia Island today to take some photos of the heavy swell that was mentioned on the radio. there was little wind but the sea blew the salty spray right in to my face and the camera too. I like this place for its roughness and unpredictability. you never know whats going to happen, which is  the charakter of photography as well.
the waves were crashing against the rock, wave after wave and the sun moved on. i´m sure the same thing will happen tomorrow, but it will be different. it is good to have some reliable things in life. nature seem to work for me.
not to sure about politics, though.

The great light is back

 

   St.Finians Bay Beach , County Kerry

After some time, I went down the road to St.Finians Bay to take some photos in the evening. I noticed that the clouds  are getting the dramatic look again and the light has a different quality now. Except the noise of the sea I did not hear anything, the evening was mild and a soft breeze was moving the air. I´m going to Germany on Friday, I´m sure going to miss this.
If you are after pictures like this stay for an hour after sunset. A tide table is helpful too. the black and white editing was done in Lightroom 3. Try to balance the dark and bright weights in your image.

Birds galore at Irish seashores

Razorbills

 

Guillemots

Fulmars

Here are photos I recently took from our regular seabird population.

It is not that easy to take pictures of birds, you need quite a good telelens and some special settings - if your camera allows for them.

Here is what I did (you need all those settings mainly for birds in flight, but you can use them for sitting birds also - they might take off after all):

First of all you need a short shutter speed of 1/1000 sec. 

Set your camera settings on this with shutter speed priority.

With that you want an automatic ISO, because you cannot predict or change it on very short notice (if you cannot set this automatically, use a highish ISO of 400 or 800 because of the very short shutter speed).

The aperture will be chosen automatically with shutter speed priority.

Now, the focus, last but not least, needs to be constantly changed with the flight of the bird, thats easiest taken care of with an Autofocus Servo Setting - it will adapt the focussing on moving subjects.
One more thing, if in flight, follow one bird, its easier to concentrate on and predict what one little fellow is going to do...

Consult your camera´s manual for the above mentioned terms, if you have not used them before...

Joy in the Morning

Camellia flower

To  take pictures of flowers, which is especially rewarding now in Spring, I use my 100mm macro lens and aim for a shallow depth of field with a big aperture, so as to blur the surroundings of the main subject - I only want the flower and the dew drops in sharp focus.

Macro lenses tend to have a shallower depth of field anyway, so for this photograph I used an f-stop of f/6.3 in aperture priority, the resulting shutterspeed was 1/300.

I had set the ISO to 100 first and of course I used a tripod, which is a habit of mine, not that you would need it by all means with this fast shutter speed.

I was also lucky, that there was absolutely no wind that morning, so the flower "sat" quite still.

If you cannot set your camera manually, there is actually a little flower on most compact cameras as a scene mode, so you want to use that for close-ups of flowers.
For a shallow depth of field the portrait mode is the nearest option but you might not get near enough to your flower, so try to experiment with these settings and then choose what you like best.

Oyster Catcher and another calm Day

I read a post by American photographer Scott Bourne this morning about how to photograph birds in flight, which I had never really done. I followed his advice and set the shutterspeed to 1/1000 sec in auto ISO and took  pictures on Ballinskelligs Beach of the Oyster Catcher. I came home and had a good few pictures in focus with the bird separated from the background. Here is the link if you like to read the post for yourself.
http://photofocus.com/2010/01/22/a-simple-primer-on-photographing-birds-in-flight/

Oyster Catchers

Later in the evening I went to the Glen, St.Finians Bay,  again, to watch the sun going down. Tripod and Remote Shutter Release are vital for those pictures and a graduated neutral density filter can help to darken or accentuate the sky slightly.