Photo of the Week 153 – Ennis Friary

Filed Under Photography on January 18, 2011 | 1 Comment

This week’s photo of the week was taken the summer before last when I was in Ennis for a friend’s wedding. I didn’t have much time for sight-seeing on my visit, but myself and another friend did find a half hour to go pay a visit to the ruins of the old Friary in the town. We didn’t have much luck with the weather though, it was generally cloudy, and we spent quite some time sheltering from the rain within the ruins! Just as we were about to head for the exit the sun burst through very briefly, and I managed to get off a few shots in good light, including this one. You can see the full set of shots from my visit on Flickr.

Ennis Friary
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
  • Exposure: 1/1250 sec
  • Focal Length: 18mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/8
  • ISO: 400
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority

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I was looking back through some older shots this week when I noticed this one which I had forgotten to upload to Flickr. I have no idea why I didn’t upload it when I shot it, because it’s one of my best astrophotography shots, nicely and clearly incorporating both the Moon and the Planet Venus into the shot. What at we see here is a view across St. Joseph’s Square in St. Patrick’s College Maynooth (SPCM)looking towards St. Patrick’s House with the spire of the College Chapel also visible. In the top left of the shot you can see Venus, and just above the building you can see a very thin crescent Moon with a lot of Earth Shine. This shot was taken with a tripod because it was dark and a four and half second exposure was needed.

Moon & Venus over SPCM
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
  • Exposure: 4.5 sec (shot on tripod)
  • Focal Length: 19mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/8
  • ISO: 200
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
  • Exposure Bias: -3.0ev

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With being sick for the last two weeks I’ve ended up with a triple post this week. I’ve chosen my three favourite shots from my recent trip to Belgium for this instalment’s theme.

The first shot I’ve chosen is of a lovely medeival castle in my home town of Duffel that is locally known as “Kasteel Ter Elst”. It remained intact right up until the first world war when it was unfortunately destroyed. You can read more about the castle here.

Kasteel Ter Elst
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
  • Exposure: 1/400 sec
  • Focal Length: 18mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/7.1
  • ISO: 200
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the second shot I’ve chosen is a train shot. In this case showing the work-horse combination of the NMBS/SNCB’s intercity services. Here we see a rake of M6 double-decker coaches (with an M6 DVT in front) being pushed by NMBS/SNCB Class 27 electric locomotive number 2725.

M6 with NMBS/SNCB Class 27
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
  • Exposure: 1/640 sec
  • Focal Length: 200mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/5.6
  • ISO: 400
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
  • Processing Used Topaz Adjust 4 plugin to give the shot a little more ‘pop’.

The final image I’ve chosen is a butterfly shot, specifically a Green-veined White (Pieris napi) feeding on a Dandelion flower (Taraxacum officinale agg.).

 Green-veined White (Pieris napi)
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
  • Exposure: 1/1600 sec
  • Focal Length: 200mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/8
  • ISO: 400
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
  • Processing: Selectively applied the Topaz Adjust 4 plugin to the butterfly and the flower.

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I’ve gotten quite behind at processing my shots – so this week I finally finished the last of my Autumn shots for 2009. With them all edited and tagged I could choose my very favourite shot of the season, and here it is! I just love this place, the buildings are amazing, and the water garden inside the square is amazing. I’ve taken many shots in here, and very few of them capture the coolness of the place, but I think this one comes close. I’m also a sucker for reflections and vibrant colours, all the more reasons to pick this as my favourite!

St. Mary's Square in Autumn
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
  • Exposure: 1/200 sec
  • Focal Length: 18mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/11
  • ISO: 200
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
  • Exposure Bias: -1.0ev
  • Processing: Single RAW image first tonemapped with Photomatix Pro, then tweaked with the Dodge & Burn plugin in Apple’s Aperture

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With the silly-season in full swing it’s probably no big surprise that I find myself a week behind again, so another double post this week. This time I decided to choose a seasonal topic – winter scenes. As it happens both these shots were taken on the same day, the 3rd of February this year. It started to snow in the late afternoon, stopped in time to get some lovely day-time shots, and then the sky cleared to give a dramatic sunset over the snow-covered landscape. A photographer’s dream, and this afternoon has already supplied two pervious Photos of the Week (50 “Braving the Snow” & 52 “Fire & Ice”).

The President's Arch
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
  • Exposure: 1/50 sec
  • Focal Length: 26mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/8
  • ISO: 800
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority

President's Arch Sunset
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
  • Exposure: 1/100 sec
  • Focal Length: 34mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/8
  • ISO: 800
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
  • Exposure Bias: -1.0ev
  • Processing: Single RAW image first tonemapped with Photomatix Pro, then tweaked with the Dodge & Burn plugin in Apple’s Aperture

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I’ve taken a lot of shots all around the wonderful grounds of St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth. However, out of those hundreds of shots, this is one of my absolute favourites. Maynooth is always beautiful in autumn, but the light was extra nice when I got this shot, so it really sings.

This is also a very important shot in my development as a photographer. The very first lesson I learned when I started shooting with a DSLR was that the dynamic range is SMALL. This meant that I was constantly being surprised by how much darker shadows are in photographs than they seem while you’re there. After having loads of shots ruined by deep shadows I started to fear and avoid them. It was while I was trying to line up this shot that I had a brain-wave – maybe the key wasn’t to avoid shadows, but to be aware of them. Sure they can destroy a shot, but, if used carefully, they can add to a shot too! In this case, the shadows add interest to what would otherwise be a very bland foreground, as well as providing leading-lines to pull the viewers eye into the shot. This image will always have a place in my heart because it represents a real Eureka moment for me.

Autumn Shadows in Maynooth
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
  • Exposure: 1/500 sec
  • Focal Length: 18mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/11
  • ISO: 400
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority

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Photo of the Week 77 – Ennis Friary

Filed Under Photography on August 12, 2009 | 1 Comment

This is my 67th Photo of the Week, yet it is only the second monochrome image to make it into the series. I think this is because I absolutely adore colour, and feel rather out of my depth when colour gets extracted from the equation. It took me hours to process this shot the first time, then I got some feed back from people on a few flickr groups, and then it took me another hour or so to have another go and come up with something I not just liked, but liked a lot. Most of the time I only revert to monochrome as a fall-back, but I’m going to try change that, and spend more time experimenting with monochrome precisely because I’m not comfortable with it.

Returning to this image, I reverted to monochrome here because I didn’t have a choice. I had once chance to get a short visit to the priory, so I had to make do with what ever I got – which was mostly rain! At the very end I got a few shots in good sun, but I didn’t have the opportunity to re-shoot this shot in sun because of time pressures. So, what I got was an image with a blown out sky, a flat looking stone building, and almost no colours to speak of. I was either going to bin it, or go monochrome. Determined not to waste the shot, I went for the monochrome option – deciding texture was going to be what I needed to concentrate on – in particular, I wanted to recover details in the sky, and enhance the details in the stonework of the building.

Since I’d shot in RAW I started by tone-mapping the image to recover detail in the sky, and also to enhance details in walls. Then I converted to monochrome using the monochrome mixer in Aperture, before using Aperture’s dodge & burn plug-in to correct some side effects of the tone-mapping and to pick out the spire of the church a little better. After seeking and getting some opinions from others I also used some pretty dramatic levels adjustments to really push up the contrast and really make those textures jump out.

Ennis Friary
on FlickrFull-Size

  • Camera: Nikon D40
  • Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
  • Exposure: 1/400 sec
  • Focal Length: 18mm
  • Focal Ratio: f/8
  • ISO: 400
  • Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
  • Processing: Generated by tonemapping a single RAW file in Photomatix Pro, then converting to monochrome in Aperture, dodging & burning in Aperture, as well as applying some other tweaks in Aperture.

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