Following the Light, photography with Mary: February 2015

Tuesday 24 February 2015

A Bird in the hand...

Did you ever get a sign when someone belonging to you has died? Something that tells you they are trying to make contact with you from the Spirit world?
I have on a few occasions. Sometimes it's a smell, sometimes it's a bird. A number of years ago a really good friend died tragically. He was in his 30's at the time and left a wife and 2 young children behind. We had been friends since childhood and he was a character, always in trouble for nonsense things and great fun to hang out with. His death shattered the wide community and left such a void in our lives.
About 2 months after he died we stayed with his wife and kids for the night. At 5am we were woken by a knocking, tap tap tap. Himself thinking it was at the bedroom door shouted "Come in". It came again, tap tap tap. Being a little more awake we realised it was coming not from the door but from the bedroom window. As we were on the first floor this was weird.
I lifted the curtain and peeped out hesitantly to see a big black crow on the ledge and as i did he tapped on the window again, tap tap tap. It was so strange and we both felt it was just like something my friend would have done.
The first time i experienced something like this was when we bought our first house back in the '80s.
The house had been owned by an old lady who apparently had become very cranky in her old age. She had died a year before we bought the house. We settled in and were very happy in our new home. One day I was hanging out the clothes on the line in the back garden, when the scruffiest female black bird started squaking at me from the top of the lawn near the shed. She was staring right at me with her beady little eyes and she gave me goosebumps. The old lady popped straight into my mind, i'm not sure what she was trying to say but we went on to spend several happy years in that house.
The best of all was the bird my dearly departed father in law sent but i'll tell you about that another time .

I took the photographs below in Cork City last week. I was passing the Peace Park when i spotted this man feeding the pigeons. I always think there's something special about someone who can get that close to be trusted by birds. I hope they aren't the spirits of his dearly departed as there are so many of them. I don't know anything about him as he wouldn't speak to me just nodded when i asked him if i could take a few photographs.

Camera settings - Camera Canon 70D, lens Canon 50mm, exp 1/320sec, f2.5, ISO 100

Camera settings - Camera Canon 70D, lens Canon 50mm, exp 1/160 sec, f4, ISO 100

Camera settings - Camera Canon 70D, lens Canon 50mm, exp 1/160sec, f4, ISO 100

Camera settings - Camera Canon 70D, lens Canon 50mm, exp 1/320sec, f2.5, ISO 100

Wednesday 18 February 2015

Guess what? I know where Heaven is.

I found out where Heaven is a few months back thanks to my 5 year old niece Eva. Eva and Adam are twins and they should know.
This is how it came about. Last October 12 months our faithful 13 year old dog Gypsy died. Any dog lover out there will understand how awfully sad it is to lose such a beloved animal.
We buried Gypsy in the garden of our holiday cottage in Ring Co. Waterford beside Misty. (an earlier tragedy)
Adam and Eva were only 4 at the time and they loved her dearly. She in turn was very gentle with them. After she died their mother Karina told them that Gypsy had died and gone to Heaven. They got over it as children do and when we got Bonnie a few months later they fell in love with her too.

The following summer Karina brought the children to Ring for an afternoon to visit us. While playing in the garden they came across the stone slab covering the burial spot. Himself was gardening at the time and they asked him why it was there. He told them that Gypsy was buried beneath it. He thought no more about it and carried on gardening but the pair were amazed. They ran into their mother with the great news that they knew where Heaven was. It was in Maurice and cha cha Mary's (they are half Polish) house in Ring.

That's all very fine though until grandma or someone else dies and all of a sudden I could become the grim reaper.

These photographs were taken in the garden in Ring on a cold February afternoon last week. They were taken with an old lens i got a present of. It's a Tamrom 28mm 2.5 Adaptall lens. It doesn't communicate with the camera so it only has manual focus which is fine if you have good eyesight. The lovely thing about the 2.5 aperture is that it throws the background out of focus and gives fab bokeh effect.

Crocus