The Winter Photography Thread

I take it you're a bit of a photo-buff, the framing and focus is very good. Do you do gardening too?

Delicious thread. At the moment the rural posters have it hands down. Where are the sparkling images of Stephen's Green and icicles in the Liffey ?

toxic avenger wrote:

I take it you're a bit of a photo-buff, the framing and focus is very good. Do you do gardening too?

Photography would be an interest alright, going the garden on the other hand, isn’t, to my disgrace I wouldn’t even know what those plants are and I bought & planted them.

tonys wrote:

Like the rail track & light house shots.

Good taste - your own of the flowers are very crisp - the last one is nice and seasonal and in the first the unfocused background is well done and the colour is also very seasonal.

toxic avenger wrote:

I like the silver birches one and the first lighthouse one a lot, auditor.

The last picture you put up is probably the best of that set, tonys, something a bit sinister about it. I'm a bit odd like that.

I took all these with a 2MP mobile phone - not bad eh ? I've been threatening to get a camera for a while now but I just haven't got around to getting one yet. The camera can take good enough shots for me particularly on a good sunny day like today for instance.

The pictures I took might need some explaining. The first few are of the West Clare railway which is being restored by the old man in the picture with the scaffold. There is an old train engine under the scaffold - he told me it was the last train to go from Ennis to Dublin (?) in the 1960s I think. He bought it himself and brought it back from Dublin and is restoring it. He said he's spending a fortune on it - he was sandblasting it as I was there. What a hobby eh ? He's an engineer who recycles glass ! Those mounds of gravel-like stuff next to the sleepers are mounds of recycled glass ! (see the closeup) It was like sand to walk on, you could pick it up and rub it between your hands without cutting yourself. Brilliant. He said he invented the machine which recycles it .. [nerd alert ahead] He said the machine spins the broken glass at 2000 miles an hour and the glass breaks itself by knocking against itself. When he's left at the end with a mound of it he can sieve the finer stuff out so he can get different grades of it. It has a multitude of uses, he says - as a type of construction gravel for large plumbing contracts, as a surface for racecourses, as a type of compost when mixed with other stuff. It has good drainage properties he kept telling me.

Did you doctor that Wuthering Heights photo tonys ? The trees look soft focus or something.

Auditor #9 wrote:

tonys wrote:

Like the rail track & light house shots.

Good taste - your own of the flowers are very crisp - the last one is nice and seasonal and in the first the unfocused background is well done and the colour is also very seasonal.

toxic avenger wrote:

I like the silver birches one and the first lighthouse one a lot, auditor.

The last picture you put up is probably the best of that set, tonys, something a bit sinister about it. I'm a bit odd like that.

I took all these with a 2MP mobile phone - not bad eh ? I've been threatening to get a camera for a while now but I just haven't got around to getting one yet. The camera can take good enough shots for me particularly on a good sunny day like today for instance.

The pictures I took might need some explaining. The first few are of the West Clare railway which is being restored by the old man in the picture with the scaffold. There is an old train engine under the scaffold - he told me it was the last train to go from Ennis to Dublin (?) in the 1960s I think. He bought it himself and brought it back from Dublin and is restoring it. He said he's spending a fortune on it - he was sandblasting it as I was there. What a hobby eh ? He's an engineer who recycles glass ! Those mounds of gravel-like stuff next to the sleepers are mounds of recycled glass ! (see the closeup) It was like sand to walk on, you could pick it up and rub it between your hands without cutting yourself. Brilliant. He said he invented the machine which recycles it .. [nerd alert ahead] He said the machine spins the broken glass at 2000 miles an hour and the glass breaks itself by knocking against itself. When he's left at the end with a mound of it he can sieve the finer stuff out so he can get different grades of it. It has a multitude of uses, he says - as a type of construction gravel for large plumbing contracts, as a surface for racecourses, as a type of compost when mixed with other stuff. It has good drainage properties he kept telling me.

Did you doctor that Wuthering Heights photo tonys ? The trees look soft focus or something.

Yeah, I can't believe how good mobile phone pictures can be, all I get on mine is a dark fuzz...

Are you from West Clare? I have good friends in Dysert, is that out your direction?

A#9
I do a lot of post production work with my shots, I find it interesting to see what you can do, without spoiling the essence of the original photo.

Toxic - where's Dysert ? (does that answer your question ?) this mobile phone is great - I used to have a 5MP camera but it died. I found the resolution was greater for stuff in the distance if I wanted to zoom in to the image afterwards on the computer (I was using it to zoom in on some crows on a church steeple once and the resolution was good but I doubt if the phone images would have that resolution... ) Other than that the phone seems to be more or less the same quality as the 5MP camera.

tonys
I think you played with the exposure on that one - I made the first lighthouse one brighter doing that. I'm not sure I understand contrast really yet or the interaction of brightness and contrast.

Did you purposely blur the trees though and are you using a particular program package to do it or just the Windows stuff ?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Toxic - where's Dysert ? (does that answer your question ?) this mobile phone is great - I used to have a 5MP camera but it died. I found the resolution was greater for stuff in the distance if I wanted to zoom in to the image afterwards on the computer (I was using it to zoom in on some crows on a church steeple once and the resolution was good but I doubt if the phone images would have that resolution... ) Other than that the phone seems to be more or less the same quality as the 5MP camera.

Ah. It's a few miles west of Ennis, but it is tiny.

Yeah my mobile looks like a brick and has the same photographic capability, so pretty impressed alright...

tonys wrote:

This morning from the garden.

Did you spray out the backgrounds in the first couple ?

Auditor #9 wrote:

tonys
I think you played with the exposure on that one - I made the first lighthouse one brighter doing that. I'm not sure I understand contrast really yet or the interaction of brightness and contrast.

Did you purposely blur the trees though and are you using a particular program package to do it or just the Windows stuff ?

I use Photoshop & Photo Filter software.

The backgrounds in this mornings set are out of focus because I used a macro lens, designed for close up work & was very close to the subject.

tonys wrote:

toxic avenger wrote:

I like the silver birches one and the first lighthouse one a lot, auditor.

The last picture you put up is probably the best of that set, tonys, something a bit sinister about it. I'm a bit odd like that.

Don't I know it.

It is a bit Wurthering Heights alright.

When I first saw that photo, I had the laptop screen at a peculiar angle and it looked even more sinister, very bleak, all shadows and silhouettes.

Sunset on the N17 last night. Beautiful

Good shots, was that jammy again?

tonys wrote:

Good shots, was that jammy again?

Nope, that was Fred

del

I got a lovely Christmas card from Shell to Sea a short while ago. I thought I'd share it with ye.

Thank you Tonys I have used one of your garden photos for my seasonal desktop background in work. its attracted a few complaments.

shutuplaura wrote:

Thank you Tonys I have used one of your garden photos for my seasonal desktop background in work. its attracted a few complaments.

You are most welcome, thank you for the mention.

Derrybrien Windfarm, Co Galway. 27th December. Taken with phone camera so not the best resolution.



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Great windmill pictures floatingingalway, you didn't happen to count those turbines -- always seems like there are hundreds of them there on that hill.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Great windmill pictures floatingingalway, you didn't happen to count those turbines -- always seems like there are hundreds of them there on that hill.

It looked like there were between 40 and 50 up there. It's some sight up close and it took a gigantic leap of faith to stand right underneath one!

This evening. Happy Christmas everyone.

Very nice Tonys. Crappy weather though.

A patch of grass fell overnight


Snowy Cyclops


Looking for breakfast


This morning 8/2/09


A snowball



An unusual sight in Ireland, the Arctic Butterfly.

The bird one is excellent tonys.