Baltimore boatyard/graveyard

What is it about some men and boats? I know i have already written about himself and the other love in his life, Conchita but I live in Cobh and I am surrounded by water on the island of Cobh so there will be a lot about boats in my blog.
Before I married himself he owned a sailing dingy, an Enterprise. He loved it. He used to take me out sailing and in an effort to impress, I tucked my feet into the strap(not sure what it's called) and leaned out over the side to add my weight, which was about a stone lighter than it is today to the balance.
I don't think i'd do the same today in such a small boat.
Call it entrapment if you like but once i married him all that hanging over the side nonsense came to an end so he sold The Enterprise and bought a Laser, he was able to sail that alone thank God.
The Laser was sold to buy a bathroom for our first house. Don't feel sorry for him, he has a fine old wooden sailing boat now and a Rankin which is a smaller wooden boat that can be sailed or used to take me around the harbour under engine. Much more my thing than sailing .

During Celtic Tiger days every Tom, Dick and Harry seemed to be arriving into the Harbour in a boat. There were sailing boats, motor boats and jet skis being  sailed and powered by very inexperienced would be boatmen. It's a lot quieter today, the madness didn't last long enough for there to be carnage. The images below were taken in Baltimore boatyard. I called the Title, Boatyard/Graveyard because the place is full of abandoned dreams.

 Camera settings,- Camera used Canon 70D, lens used, Canon 18-135mm@20mm, exp 1/640sec, f10, ISO 100

 Camera settings- Camera used Canon 70D, Lens used, Tamron 10-24mm@10mm, exp 1/60sec, f11, ISO100

 Camera settings-Camera used Canon 70D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@10mm, exp 1/250sec, f11, ISO100

 Camera settings-Camera used Canon 70D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exp 1/250sec, f11, ISO100

 Camera settings-Camera used Canon 70D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@22mm, exp 1/100sec, f11, ISO100

 Camera settings Camera used Canon 70D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@22mm, exp 1/320sec, f11, ISO 100

 Camera settings - Camera used Canon 70D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@10mm. exp 1/160sec, f11, ISO 100

 Camera settings- Camera used Canon 70D, lens used Tamrom 10-24mm@10mm, exp 1/400sec, f5.6, ISO100

Camera settings- Camera used Canon 70D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@17mm, exp 1/100sec, f16, ISO 100

The Cruel Sea

I was telling you in a previous post, 'A Cross to Bear' about my mother who suffered a brain haemorrage when we were children. This left her with serious brain damage and a loss of her short term memory function.
She camouflaged  this fact very well and managed to live a very ordinary if sometimes contrary life. She told stories about her childhood and her nursing days, which she remembered very well and invented stories and told white lies at a great rate. In fact she talked constantly, one of the reasons that I am so quite by nature I suspect. I couldn't get a word in edge ways.
We treasure any stories we hear about our mother as a young woman before the brain haemorrage changed her life. You can imagine my joy at finding a website containing stories written by the children of Laghey School, Co Donegal. Some of them written by my mother when she was 14 years old.
All the stories were gathered by the pupils of Laghey school from older family members and neighbours. One of my mother's stories was collected from a 70yr old lady called Ellen Likely.
It tells of a huge Tide that came into the estuary of Mullinasole where they lived in 1882. it happened one August day very unexpectedly. The tide kept rising and people fled their homes. It stayed high for 3 days and when the people returned only 6 of the 36 homes were still standing.
20 herd of cattle were killed, the bodies of hens, dogs and cats were strewn everywhere.
This sounds for all the world like a tsunami and it was written long before my mother's brain issues so I'm pretty sure it isn't made up. Here is a link to the website if you would like to read the full story. http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4428271/4390351/4435982
These are some photographs I took in Mullinasole recently. The sea was beautifully calm that weekend. So beautiful and yet so cruel.

 View of the estuary where this catastrophe took place. Mullinasole Co. Donegal
Camera settings, Camera used-Canon 70D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exp-1/200sec, f11, ISO200

A ruin on my great-grandfather's land, Rosilly, Co Donegal

Camera settings, Camera used Canon 70D, Lens used Tamron 10-24@14mm, exp-1/125sec, f8, ISO100

View from the pier head onfront of my mother's family home, Mullinasole, Co. Donegal

Camera settings,  Camera used Canon 70D, Lens used Canon 18-135mm@50mm, exp-1/100sec, f22, ISO 100

 Tallyown, where we played as children on our summer holidays, Mullinasole
Camera settings, Camera used Canon 70D, lens used Canon 18-135mm@39mm, exp-1/100sec, f22, ISO 100

View of the pier and incoming tide, taken from my mother's family home, Mullinasole, 

Camera settings, Camera used Canon 70D, Lens used Tamron 10-24mm@17mm, exp-1/250sec, f14, ISO 100

 Another view from the garden taken at sunset,Mullinasole, Co Donegal
Camera settings, Camera used Canon 70D, Lens used Canon 18-135mm@39mm, exp-1/250sec, f14, ISO100

 The hills of Donegal in the distance, view from the garden, Mullinasole.
Camera settings, Camera used Canon 70D, Lens used Canon 18-135mm@50mm, exp 1/250sec, f14, ISO 100

Sunset and boats at rest on the beautiful still waters of the estuary at Mullinasole, Co. Donegal
Camera settings, Camera used Canon 70D, Lens used canon 18-135mm@ 18mm, exp-1/100sec, f18, ISO 100

And he calls her Conchita.

Himself has a mistress, he's had her for years. Compared to me she's hard work and her bum is so much bigger than mine. I'm not really jealous of her except sometimes during the summer when he yearns to be with her. There's a beautiful sea breeze and he's looking longingly out to sea and i know he's thinking of her.
Here she is, A Bermudan Sloop. I call her an old man's boat because there's no creature comforts aboard. She's got a small cabin area, a portaloo -if you are brave enough or can't wait until you get ashore, and not much room in the cockpit area to move about.
I'm not a happy camper when it comes to sailing but i have been out in it a few times. If nothing else the sea is a great place to get photographs of the town and the seabirds.

I took this from the safety of the pier during a Traditional sailboat race in Cobh a few years ago.

Camera settings, Camera used Canon 500D, Lens-Canon 55-250mm@250mm, exp1/1000sec, f5.6, ISO100

This is Roches Point Lighthouse at entrance to Cork Harbour

Camera settings, Camera Canon 500D, Lens used Canon 55-250mm@109mm, exp 1/4000 sec, f5.6. ISO400

Seagull saying hello to the terrified looking photographer aboard the old man's sailing boat.

 Camera settings,Camera used Canon 500D, lens used Canon 55-250mm@230mm, exp 1/4000sec, f7.1, ISO 400

 Camera settings, Camera used Canon 500D, lens used Tamrom 10-24mm@13mm, exp 1/800, f11, ISO100

 Camera settings, Camera Canon 500D, Lens used Tamron 10-24mm @12mm, exp 1/500sec, f11, ISO 100

This is himself, Maurice in the best seat in the house.

 Camera settings, Camera used Canon 500D Lens used Tamron 10-24mm@12mm, esp 1/200sec, f14, ISO 100

View of Cobh and the Cork Pilot boat through ropes of Conchita

 Camera settings,Camera used Canon 500D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exp 1/200 sec, f22, ISO100

 heading up river towards mooring and safety of land.

 Camera settings, Camera used Canon 500D, lens used Tamron 10-24mm@15mm, exp 1/200sec, f22, ISO200

Thank you for reading my blog

I'm delighted with the response to my blog which i started a short time ago.  To the 342 people that have read my blog to date i thank you all, if you find it interesting share it with others. I'm struggling to keep it going to be honest. I started it to gain experience in putting myself out there and it has been some journey. My biggest problem has been opening myself up to you in the WWW. At the same time I have got so much encouragement from the experience. I hope it will grow and you will continue to find it interesting.
I have started uploading photographs onto Flickr  https://www.flickr.com/photos/mfkid1/  this link should get you there if you are interested in checking out my work. I'm not struggling for photographs as  i have thousands. It's time I need more of.

As I mentioned in a previous post  I am working on a new body of work.   It involves my concept of me, the spirit, nature, rocks, the sky and how we all fit  into this life. It's far from finished and the thinking behind it is a little off the wall but here goes.

I did warn you. I'm not happy with the sky in this image so I have a bit of work to do to sort it out. These are all self portraits. I had to pop the camera on the tripod and use a remote release for this image and then there was a lot of editing to do in photoshop to get it to this stage. I couldn't begin to describe how to do it. There are some brilliant videos on youtube though that go through it in every detail. This is my spirit self.

This is just for fun. I'm having a mermaid moment, the seaweed is my hair extensions.  Again the camera is on a tripod and i used the timer with the remote release.

This is in tune with the first photograph. It's about looking for strength and taking it from the rock. it gets wakier but this is just a taste of what I'm working on. I would love some feed back, my email for this blog is beachcomberkid@gmail.com 

A Cross to Bear

The Graveyards of Ireland are full of the most beautiful crosses. Headstones have taken over big time on modern graves but old stone crosses are standing the test of time and though in some cases the writing is hard to decipher, the cross is standing marking the final resting place of a life lived.

The Cross has great significance to me not only  as a Christian but also because it held such weight in our house. My Mother frequently prayed for a cross. I don't know why she would do this as she suffered a brain haemorrage when she was expecting my younger sister, which nearly killed the pair of them. One time in particular her prayer was answered. Biafra was in the news at the time. There was a major famine and the images we were seeing on TV were too much to bear.
That night after the Rosary my mother prayed for a cross as a sacrifice for the poor starving people in Biafra.
Next morning she got up for mass as she did every morning. She walked the half mile to the church on her own, which was about as far as she could venture without getting lost. As she was approaching the gates of the church a black dog who greeted her every morning ran out from his house and bit her in the leg. He cut through an artery and the blood shot up in the air, we were told.
She got 40 stitches in her leg and guess what.... The scar healed in the shape of a cross. So be careful what you ask for, that's a true story. I wish i had a photograph of her leg to show you.

I did create this next photograph in memory of my mother. I call it "A Cross o Bear", the shadow of the cross is falling across the models face. The significance of this for me is the shadow the Brain Haemorrhage left on her life and ours too. She was just a shadow of the woman she was before it happened and we never knew her as she should have been. To this day we love to hear stories about her as a young woman who nursed for several years before she got married.

Camera settings, Lens used Canon 50mm prime lens, exposure 1/250sec, f16, ISO 400

A selection of crosses from graveyards in Cork and Waterford

The Lusitania graveyard Cobh

Camera settings, Lens used-Tamron 10-24mm@10mm, exposure I/1000sec, f3.5, ISO 100

The Lusitania graveyard Cobh

Camera settings, Lens used Tamrom 10-24mm@10mm, exposure 1/500sec, f4.5, ISO100

Ardmore Graveyard, co. Waterford

Camera settings, Lens used Tamron 10-24mm@21mm, exposure 1/400sec, f7.1, ISO100

Ardmore Graveyard Co. Waterford

Camera settings, Lens used Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exposure 1/100sec, f11, ISO 100

Stradbally Graveyard Co Waterford

Camera settings, Lens used Canon 18-135mm@21mm, Exposure 1/2000sec, f4.5, ISO100

Lismore Graveyard Co. Waterford

Camera settings, Lens used Tamron 10-24mm@10mm, exposure 1/40sec, f4, ISO100

Abbeyside Graveyard, Dungarvan, Co Waterford

Mad Cows

I haven't been here for a while. I had a lovely holiday and a break from all things technical and the internet, which I missed only slightly.
I did get to take lots of photos and got a bit done on a body of work I'm thinking about and dreaming about and planning. If it ever get's finished I'll share it with you at some stage.

This is about cow's. I love looking at cattle, they are such peaceful creatures most of the time. I have had a few hairy experiences with them though. Once, while walking through a field with himself and the dog, the cattle were up the hill at a fair distance minding their own business. Then one started walking down towards us and i got a little nervous. Himself said don't run what ever you do. Next her friend followed suit and before long all their friends were trotting towards us. Well i took off, it was everyman and dog for himself as far as i was concerned. I made it to a clump of trees with himself following I might add and scrambled through a barbed wire fence ripping my jeans in the process but i didn't care. I had survived being trampled.
On another occasion I was visiting the ruin of my Great grandfather's house in Mullinasole, Co. Donegal when the local cattle got very inquisitive and surrounded the house. As there was no door on the ruin or windows for that matter I was freaking out more than a little. Himself had a stick and proceeded to warn them off while we scurried again for safety. Our old dog was chased around the ruin by these mad beasts but thankfully got to us in time before she was trampled.

These are some photos i took recently in Ring Co Waterford of the local beasts. Ring cattle are friendly enough. They graze an area known locally as the Connigear and are well used to people passing by. These were taken nearer to Helvic and thankfully these beasts were behind walls and i was safely positioned on the road.

 Camera settings Lens used, Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exposure 1/100sec, f32, ISO100 

Camera settings Lens used Tamron 10-24mm@24mm, exposure 1/100sec, f9, ISO100

Camera Settings Lens used Tamron 10-24mm@16mm, exposure 1/100sec, f25, ISO 100