A neighbour's child

Back to Conceptual photography for a moment. I don't know how you are going to feel about this photograph and I was very slow to make it public, however I had it hanging in the Sirius Exhibition for a few weeks and I haven't been excommunicated so here goes.

When i was doing my last Photography course I had to come up with a Body of Work. I have spoken about this in previous posts. I dug deep into my own personal experiences for these images and most of them are very personal to me but can be interpreted by the individual in several different ways.

The Title of the body of work is "The veil that hides the future from us is woven by the Angel of Mercy". I got this saying from my father in law, R.I.P. The title of the image is "A Neighbours Child".

This image was inspired by a very sad and disturbing event. While out walking my dog along the shore on a wet October morning a few years ago I came upon the body of a young man who had hung himself.  It was along the stretch of shore in the photograph not from this tree.

I remember thinking that this wasn't my sadness, I wasn't the one getting the terrible news that day. Probably my mind helping me to deal with the situation. 

That is what this image is about. The veil over the lens is acting as a net curtain and I'm looking through a window into someone else's life. 

The rope juxtaposed with the swing are a haunting reminder of the events of that day. It makes me wonder if suicide by hanging has anything to do with getting back to a happy childhood place, worry and care free.

Camera settings Lens used Tamron 10 - 24mm@13mm, Exposure 1/200, f9, ISO 100

This will probably be my last post for a few days as i'm off on hols for a week and i don't think i will have internet access. I would love to hear other people's interpretations of this image if anyone feels like commenting below. Stay safe and well until we meet again.

Lighthouses off the South West Coast of Ireland

It's been a busy few days and i haven't taken many photos, we are blessed with really good weather at the moment and I should be making time to wander off with the camera but i'm in lazy mode.
Himself is just home from a sailing trip on his friend's "Moody", three sailors off on a booze cruise down West. They had a ball staying in beautiful bays and inlets along the way Baltimore, Schull, Cape Clear, Castletownsend and Courtmacsherry being the main stop overs.
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Last year myself and Clare went with them, the weather was beautiful, thank God, or I wouldn't have been there. I would seriously have jumped ship if there was any sign of choppy seas. As it was I was a nervous wreck going ashore in the dingy but the thought of solid ground and a pint of cider made the dingy trip worth while. There were several of those trips along the way. One of the nicest places we stayed in was Cape Clear Island.

I collected a lot of Yarrow on the Island and had it tied in bunches in my cabin drying. Yarrow tea is very good for colds and sore throats in the winter. Rory, the Captain, scared the be jaysus out of me when we were passing Baltimore later and the customs boat was about checking boats, for drugs i suppose. He had me convinced i was going to be taken off the boat and arrested for drying strange looking weed in my cabin. I got away with it that time but i wasn't taken on the trip this year, not sure if it had anything to do with that episode. I wasn't complaining though and happily waved the boys off.

These are some of the images i took last year of the lighthouses along the South West Coast.

This is the Fastnet Rock, also known as Ireland's tear drop

Camera settings Camera, Canon 500D, lens 18 - 55 @39mm. Exposure 1/160 sec, f14, ISO 100

The Baltimore Beacon, also known as Lot's Wife.

Camera settings, Camera  Canon 500D, Lens used 55-250mm @171mm, exposure 1/400sec, f11, ISO 100

The Galley Head Light House in Clonakilty

Camera Settings, Camera Canon 500D, Lens used 55-250mm@55mm, exposure, 1/2000sec, f5.6, ISO 200

The Old Head of Kinsale Light House

Camera settings, Camera Canon 500D, Lens used 55-250mm@135mm, exposure, 1/1328sec, f9, ISO 200

Roches Point Light House

Camera Settings, Camera Canon 500D, Lens used 55-250mm@116mm,  exposure 1/500sec,  f11, ISO 200

Bloody Nasturtiums

I know that's an awful thing to call a beautiful flower but they have been the bane of my life for years.   I've just spent the past hour in the garden pulling out literally hundreds of the trailing variety that have infiltrated my patio, my vegetable garden and the wood pile. I'm not too bothered about the wood pile to be honest, they look quite attractive there but give them an inch and they take a mile.

It all started about 18 years ago when my father in law came to live with us. His wife had died two years previously and he missed her terribly and wasn't coping very well without her. He always loved Nasturtiums and had taken over a triangle of garden at the top of the road he lived on and planted the whole thing in Nasturtiums. When he left to come and live with us he entrusted the garden to his Godchild, Mary Perry. Mary loved flowers and couldn't grow anything else while the garden was full of Nasturtiums so she pulled them up and planted a beautiful garden there.

Grandad was horrified, he was disgusted with her, so disgusted that he wrote a poem about it.

The Nasturtium Garden 

or

Mary Perry

I often think of Mary Perry

who banned Nasturtiums from my life,

She acted worse than any mother

She acted worse than any wife.

I had a happy little garden, 

Nasturtiums grew there row on row,

And Butterflies cavorted gaily,

while bees supped up their honey flow.

Across my path came Mary Perry,

She banished butterflies and bees,

And planted in my lovely garden, 

Some ugly, twisted, blackened trees.

But worse she killed all my Nasturtiums,

She tore them up with savage glee,

and laughed at all my sad objections.

She did not give a damn for me.

But now I have another garden,

Nasturtiums bloom there wild and free,

I laughed at all her gloomy efforts,

She'll never, never, conquer me.

by John Kidney

The other garden he referred to of course was my garden. I spent the 14 years he was living with us trying to control the nasturtiums and when he wasn't looking I was pulling them up. He often caught me and he'd bang on the window with his stick, a playful warning.

He died 4 years ago and we all miss him so much, he was a huge part of our lives and I didn't have the heart to pull up his Nasturtiums until tonight. I had to because they were taking over completely.

I made this image for Mary Perry and thankfully she loved it. She loved him dearly and he loved her in spite of what she did to his precious nasturtiums. I was afraid it might be considered a little creepy but here goes, see what you think.

These were some of the nasturtiums i shamefully pulled up tonight. I took the photo of the nasturtiums in the glorious morning sunlight, the marble slab was just lying there waiting for himself to find a job for it. I selected the head of grandad in a an old photograph and added him to the stone turning down the opacity to make him almost ghostlike. I added the words from his poem because wherever he is I'm sure he is surrounded by nasturtiums. 

Camera Settings, Lens used, Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exposure 1/800 sec, f4.5, ISO 100

The Lusitania Graveyard Cobh

I took my brother in law John to do his shopping this morning and rather than wait in the hot car or traipse around the shop after him I wandered off with my camera to the Old Graveyard in Cobh.
I have a strange obsession with these places as i've said before. It's not an obsession with death and dying rather a love of peaceful, lonely space, strength in stone, ancient statues and crosses and overgrowth and of course the history. I also love the trees and wild flowers that take over when there's no one left to tend the graves.

Camera Settings, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@10mm Exposure 1/100 sec, f7.1, ISO 100

This is a HDR image of the Grave of the Officers and men of the tragic gun accident on board the Ship HM Mars on 14th April 1902 off the South West coast of Ireland

Camera Settings, Lens used Tamron 10-24mm @10mm
3 images were used  1 exposure 1/125sec, f13, ISO 100
                                 2 exposure 1/640sec, f13, ISO 100
                                 3 exposure 1/60  sec, f13, ISO 100

I merged the 3 images and changed image to Black and White.

There are 3 of these beautiful stones marking the graves of the Lusitania victims.

Camera Settings, Lens used Tamron 10-24mm, exposure 1/160sec, f7.1. ISO 100

Excuses

Excuses
We've had a bit of  hectic week here hence the reason for neglecting my blog. We were searching for a missing dog for 3 days. My brother John was looking after him for his ex-wife and kids and he escaped. Thank God there was a happy ending. Thanks to Social media, he was spotted and eventually found.

As I have no new material to show you I'm going to post some of my photos from the body of work I produced for my last College course. I showed you the first 1 in a previous post. The body of work is called "The veil that hides the future from us is woven by the angel of mercy".

This image is called 'Mourning and weeping"

Technically this isn't a great photo as the eyes aren't pin sharp but that's the beauty about conceptual or contemporary photography. Anything goes as long as it has a message  or meaning. The dullness in the eyes adds to the sorrowful look i was going for.

Camera settings, exposure 1/125sec, f5.6, ISO 100 Off camera flash was used

This image was changed to black and white using layers in photoshop and a mask used to uncover the red colour of the lips. Youtube is a great source for tutorials on this and anything else for that matter.

Next image, called "The Valley of Tears"

I used this image in my first post. When i started working on this body of work I wasn't sure where it was going. I was amazed at how much of my Catholic upbringing came out in the images. "Mourning and Weeping in the Valley of Tears" were words from a prayer 'The Hail Holy Queen' that my mother recited every evening to finish off the Rosary. It's engrained in my memory.

Camera settings, 1/15sec, f25, ISO 125

The last one I'm going to show you today is called "Shattered Dreams"

 

Camera Settings, 1/8000, f20, ISO 100

It's up to the beholder to take what they want from these images, it was a very personal journey for me but when you are looking at them keep the theme in mind. "The veil that hides the future from us is woven by the angel of mercy".

St Swithin's Day

St Swithin's Day
Well the rain held off for most of the day and I thought we were going to escape but unfortunately it has started so we are doomed. That is if we are to believe the old wives tale then we are facing 40 days of persistent rain. My mother was a great believer in the Saints. She had a Saint for everything, lost items and lost causes were her favourites. That was St. Anthony and St Jude respectively.

I headed out for a walk with Bonnie my Collie and my camera even though it was dull and overcast.

 Camera Settings, Lens used 18-135mm@18mm, Exposure1/160sec, f11, ISO 320

The Dawn Princess Leaving Cobh today 15th July

Camera Settings, Lens used 18-135mm@135mm, Exposure1/160sec, f11, ISO 100

Camera Settings, Lens used 18-135mm@72mm, Exposure 1/160sec, f11, ISO 100

Where the wild roses grow

Where the wild roses grow.
My mother had a beautiful hedge of wild roses. Everyone told her she had green fingers because everything she took slips from grew. Her wild rose was a beautiful dark pink one that started from a slip she took from her mother's garden in Mullinasole, Co. Donegal. She hoped that her thorny hedge would keep out the ball playing hooligans that tormented her.

I've planted several slips of wild roses and a few of them have actually taken so I hope i have inherited my mother's green fingers. This is my favourite, it's not unlike my mother's.

Camera settings
Lens used 18 - 135mm @ 85mm, Exposure 1/250sec, f16, ISO 100, flash used as the rose is growing in the shade of a Sycamore tree.


Hay Hay
It's that time of the year again and the farmers are busy with the hay. The rolls aren't half as picturesque or as fun as the hay stacks of old.  We had great fun as children climbing the haystacks, the local farmer didn't appreciate our antics though. Maybe that's the reason they changed over to rolls.

I took these images in Ring Co Waterford today. There was no golden sunshine which is always nice for hay.
Camera Settings
Lens used  Image 1 Canon18-135mm @18mm, Exposure 1/200 sec, F7.1, ISO 100
                  Image 2       "           "         @ 30mm, Exposure 1/320sec, f7.1, ISO 100


Grass and Hedgerows

The fields and hedgerows are full of material to photograph, especially if you are walking around with a standard lens on your camera. The wide angle lets you get physically close and fits in lots of detail. The clarity, contrast and sharpness of these images are all adjusted in post processing.

Camera settings
Lens used,  Image 1 Canon 18-135mm@92mm, Exposure 1/320sec, f7.1, ISO 100
                   Image 2     "             "         @18mm,         "           "            "         "

Back to the tree man

Back to the tree man.

The good thing about writing a blog and one of the reasons I started to write one is that i have to get out and about with the camera and get new material.
This is the same tree i wrote about in my second post. I went back to the Graveyard at 8.30pm alone to see how he was doing. He's surviving as you can see and he's got a fine head full of greenery. I didn't hang around too long, it was getting late and a bit too lonely even for me.

Camera Settings
Lens Tamron 10 - 24mm @ 10mm Exposure 1/80sec, f9, ISO 100. using tripod

I love Black and White, especially when I'm photographing old ruins. It works well with portraits of older people too.

This old ruin is on Connolly's point in Mullinasole, Co. Donegal, my mother's homeplace. Her father was reared on this point. I think this was an outhouse on their property.

Camera settings
Lens 10 - 24mm @ 13mm. Exposure 1/125 sec, f8, ISO 100

Both of these images were taken in Camera Raw. I always play around with clarity and lifting shadows. I also sharpen a little and adjust lens distortion unless i want to keep the distorted effect of the wide angle lens. I convert it to black and white last and play around with the colour sliders until i'm happy with the effect. e.g. moving the blue slider to the darker side darkens the sky giving a dramatic effect.

This is the same image in colour.

The veil that hides the future

I collected 2 photographs from the Sirius art Centre in Cobh yesterday. I had them on display in an Open House exhibition for the past few weeks. I have to say i was a bit nervous about having them on display. They were part of a body of work that i completed for my Fetac course this year and they were what i suppose would be considered 'Fine Art Photography or Conceptual or Contemporary Photography'. I was nervous of putting myself out there on public display as in, the work was quite personal. However the beauty about this type of photography is that anyone who looks at it takes their own meaning from it.

For this type of work you have to come up with an idea or work to a theme.  I dug deep and used some personal experiences for mine.

I used a saying that my father in law,God rest him, used all the time. He used to say "An Angel of mercy hides the future from us" which is very true. I looked up the saying on Google and found that it was an old proverb, the full saying is " The veil that hides the future from us is woven by the angel of mercy".

I took this and let my imagination run wild and came up with 9 images around the theme, using the veil as a symbol to hide the knowledge of what the future holds.

I'll show you the main one now and I'll introduce the rest over time in the blog.

In this image there's a young girl on her communion day standing with her brother. I highlighted her to make her stand out. In the 'crystal ball' beneath her is an image of the same girl on her wedding day.
On her communion day she had stepped into cow dung and distroyed her shoes, you can see  the dung on the toes. She has a really worried look on her face as she was scolded for being so silly.
The medicine bottles are there to symbolise her career as a nurse. The shadow of the whisky bottle is just that. She was far from an alcoholic but it just shows what can be insinuated in a photograph.

I called this image 'The veil that hides the future'. If she had known on her communion day that one day she would leave her mammy and daddy and become a nurse and go off to the war, see all kinds of horrendous things, then come home and marry a man and have 5 children, I think the look on her face would be more of horror than worry. That's where the veil comes in, it hides a huge amount of knowledge from us.

The hope is that anyone looking at this image would take their own meaning from it, maybe a younger person would look at it and wonder what would be in their crystal ball.

How I did it
I set up this image on a shelf in my sitting room. I pinned the Communion photograph to the back wall of the shelf. I used an old glass fishing float as the crystal ball and placed it underneath the photograph. I superimposed the wedding photograph of the same girl onto the ball using post processing software, then i arranged the medicine bottles to the left and I placed the whisky bottle in such a way that the off camera flash threw the shadow of the bottle onto the image.

Settings used
Camera on tripod, Lens Canon 70-300mm @90mm. exposure 1/100sec, f7.1, ISO100, Off camera flash.

Ruins and Graveyards

Incase it isn't obvious from my profile photo I love old graveyards and old ruins. Not so much for the Spiritual aspect of the places but I love that too. I love the feeling of peacefulness, the feeling of being alone with nature, at least i hope i'm alone. I haven't had a visitation yet so let's hope it stays that way.

I was actually blown away when i came across this tree growing out of an old grave in the Lusitania graveyard in Cobh. I imagined the dead body nourishing the ground that produced this tree ( I know, I have a strange mind) and admired the fight for survival. So much so that it had burst through the corner of the grave and blown the pillar sideways. It has obviously been chopped down several times  and still it is growing and reaching for the sky. It actually looks like a male torso in a strange sort of way.

Camera settings This image is a HDR image, this means that i have taken 3 images at different exposures and merged them together using software. I cheated though and just took 1 image then saved it at -1 exposure and at +1 exposure and merged the 3. settings were, speed 1/125sec, f7.1, ISO 100. I converted to Black and White after and played around with the colour sliders to give it the affect above.

Lens used Tamron 10-24 wide angle @10mm

I took this image using the Tamron 10 - 24mm @ 11mm also.  Speed 1/800sec, f4, ISO 100. I love the way it exaggerates what's closest to the lens and gives it a surreal feeling.

I have photographed this arch so many times that i feel i own a share in it. Unfortunately it's not going to be around for too long more, i noticed a fair bit of deterioration in the structure since i photographed it in the spring. I used the Tamron 10 - 24mm @ 12mm, 1/100sec, f16, ISO 100.

I find using manual focussing with this lens works better than auto focus.

Welcome to my blog

To whom it may concern or to anyone who may be interested, I am an amateur photographer with a keen interest in Nature and Wildlife. I have dabbled a bit in portraiture and more recently in Contemporary photography which i find myself being drawn more and more into.

I called this Blog, 'Following the Light' because for one thing, without light there wouldn't be a photograph but mainly because of the effect that working with light has on my mojo. I can get so peed off on dark winter days when there's nothing but dark clouds and rain.

One really wet stormy day I set my camera up on the tripod inside my bedroom window and took photos at different stages during the day.

I called this image 'The Valley of Tears' I took this image using the Tamron 10 - 24mm wide angle lens at 21mm. 1/15sec, f25, ISO 125

A little bit about my credentials:

I have achieved a Distinction in Fetac Level 6 photography and would highly recommend the course to anyone who is serious about photography. To any beginner, i would recommend Fetac level 5 first.

In this blog i will share some of my photographs and the camera settings i used. I hope this will be helpful to anyone who like myself is trying to improve the quality of their photography. I use a Canon 70D which is a fabulous camera. I upgraded from a Canon 500D about 6months ago and there's no comparison. I don't have any amazing lenses yet. I use the standard Lens a lot, mine is 18 - 135mm which is a big improvement on the 18 - 55mm. I have a Canon 70 - 300mm 4-5.6 which is a lovely lens. I have a Canon 50mm, 1.8 prime lens which is very reasonably priced and is great for portraiture. I also have a Tamron 10 - 24mm 3.5 - 4.5 which gets very bad reviews but I'm quite happy with it.

Garden Birds

Little Sparrows, This Image was taken using the Canon 70 - 300mm lens.  1/1000 sec, f 5.6, ISO 320.

I shoot in Camera Raw as this gives me a lot of options in post processing. This won't make a bad image any better and it is a lot of work but i enjoy it.

This was taken with the same lens as above, at 1/1000 sec, f 5.6, ISO 400.