I knew the rocks east of Dalkey Island as The Muglins for years long before I knew that executed pirates were put on display there. Somehow it came as no surprise that a word as ugly as Muglins was describing a place of death.
[Read more…] about Muglins FridayThursday Smiled
I mentioned ‘the decisive moment’ in yesterday’s post. The Decisive Moment (1952) was where Henri Cartier-Bresson formalised his idea of capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous such that the image represents the essence of the event itself.
The mere memory of the concept had me thinking of capturing a decisive moment of my own. I wondered if a walk along Dun Laoghaire pier might be the place to search out some moment among the boats, birds and the folk taking their constitutionals. I thought to take 4000 steps to find documentary shots with a personal expression of the things I saw.
And Thursday smiled on me. I found myself on the pier chatting to another photographer who chose coincidentally to also bring a Sigma 150-600mm lens, just like I did. I noticed a few simple juxtapositions that almost qualify as decisive, two relying on the distance flattening of extreme magnification. The gannet enters the water. A rod flexes in the cast of a fishing line a kilometre from my camera (the red Poolbeg Lighthouse is more than five kilometres distant). Perspective misleads as two identical ships pass near the mouth of Dublin port.
[Read more…] about Thursday SmiledWednesday’s Hump
‘Don’t you like landscapes?’ someone once asked during a Tadaa challenge in 2012. Tadaa was an Instagram kind of app very popular with iPhone users in the time before Instagram took off.
Of course I like landscapes. The question came at a time when I was learning how to capitalise on the tiny lens in a phone. I spent several years on an iPhoneography mission while learning how to spot ‘the decisive moment’. Things have changed but here are five iPhone photos from 2009 that were ‘published’ on Tadaa in 2012.
Tree Spotting
20091010 iPhone 3GSParis Smile
20091010 iPhone 3GS
Another Fluffy Souvenir
20091010 iPhone 3GSHotel Des Invalides
20091010 iPhone 3GSSea Walking
20091107 iPhone 3GS
Tuesday’s Muse
A quote from Laozi, the author of the Tao Te Ching:
‘If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.’
Myself and my walking buddy might have had good reason to have broken from our walk towards Rome and gone to Marseille last weekend. Day 52 of the trek would have found us in Lentilles. I’m still not sure how we’d have made the 700 km diversion from the Aube which is poorly served by trains. Nonetheless, we both had high hopes that Leinster Rugby would have made it to another European Rugby Cup Final and made good on the failure to win a fifth title in Newcastle last year.
[Read more…] about Tuesday’s MuseMonday’s Petem
It’s gone quiet in the kitchen. The Coal Tits have fledged and we feel a bit bereft. Is bereft something you can qualify like this? Can you be very bereft?
Inverted 109 jpeg time-lapse gif
X-T3 85 mm 1/10,000s f/5.6 ISO 3200
Ruby Sunday
‘Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone’
or
‘Catch your dreams before they slip away’
The lyrics of Ruby Tuesday never made sense to me but what a melodic and catchy song it is. Perhaps it’s not anthemic enough to feature in a global top 50 of the best songs of all times if only because The Rolling Stones probably have a dozen other contenders. It’s one of my favourites and another is Angie.