New Year over the passage grave at Knockroe.

Christmas lights

I was at the party of the camera club last night and before the Do I when around the middle of town to see the lights. It was 8 ish and so had hardly any foot or car traffic.
What struck me was the difference between the different streets with regard to the lighting. You see the businesses pay for it those that are on the street that is. So the Narrow Street (Mitchell St), the street with the smallest shops had by far the most and best lights. The main street was poor, and it has the banks and the national chain shops, but Gladstone St was almost dark. It has most of the international chains, McDonald's, Boots, Carphone Warehouse and others.

   

Trevi fountain out of a hounds eat.

Bandaging solution off the youtube. I had it staunched with a finger plaster and the spray but she left it be for ages then shook like a lunatic and in was back, ooooh boy was it back.

A ruins in morning sun, Joyce's Tower out of Ulysses.

Sunday on the mountain in a blizzard.

Winter loveliness

A pup in a fire, almost !.

I have made an executive decision... .

... . to either ignore everything emitting from Trump or treat it as a new series of the Beverly Hill Billy's.

God Bless America.

Photos taken by the Sony.

These are images that would be difficult to achieve with the Nikon. I have more in very low light that I took when I was doing some work for two local groups of actors. I don't want to publish them until their plays are over.

New Camera.

New camera arrived a few days ago. And I was correct with the other one, the viewfinder was very bad indeed.
Lucky really I was connected with a few people that have them, who were bemused at my comment at the dimness of the view from the eye piece. And I had a bit of luck, or not, depending. But Amazon didn't ship a charger in the box. I got the cables but not the charger. Anyway Amz reduced the price by almost £200 for this was the 2nd product that was incorrect. The first really wasn't merchantable and this for the missing part.
Ohh the ring on the jotter is from my supper plate. :-)

Result of new camera test.

I returned the Sony A7 to Amazon for the view finder was I believe faulty. And I ordered a replacement.
Just a bit of background.
The A7 is a full frame, the exact size of the old 35mm film, and mirrorless. The latter means more to me that the former, but FF is nice to have. But sans mirror means the camera is shorter front to back, or what's know as the flange distance. This has two important effects, one, it's lighter, and two, it means with the addition of an extender tube you can adapt any lense glass from almost any maker that works. And for someone like me who hates the very concept of manufacturers eco-systems -meaning you buy a Nikon camera you have to then buy Nikon glass. And the same with all the other makers like Canon and so on.- this is a dream. If it works.
  The viewfinder, I've discovered was faulty. It really should have allowed a very good rendition of the scene, and it really shouldn't have been hit or miss getting the focus I wanted. It should've been readily apparent.
I did give it a good testing though. Almost 600 shots, comprising of landscapes and a shoot I did for a play Pinters The Dumb Waiter being put on locally. And I was impressed with the ISO sensitivity and the usability was well above my Nikon.

New camera test

I bought a Sony A7 about 3 weeks ago and have been testing it since. It has a full frame sensor and 24 mpix resolution. But it has an electronic viewfinder rather than a pentaprism or a through and through viewfinder like in the old days.
It's also mirrorless meaning it's thinner front to back but more or less the same face on. But what it does mean is that with the use of connectors you can put any lense on it. However this also means you don't have active Auto Focus which on a high resolution can be the death of an image if you miss it with your eye. Here are some of the results.

  

Ooh jeepers

This post is not about you know who. No, this references Weinstein.

With due cognizance that no jury and judge has pronounced over any crime, the issue has been opened in a general sense and I think it can be treated.

You have to give plaudits to Judd for bringing this into the open for no matter how you cut it her career has ended. And I expect so too has the ongoing career of those that me too'ed for I think they fundamentally miss the basic savagery of the industry they are in. And the very clear imperatives of that industry.

Nor do I for one moment think this will change the nasty scum in that or any other such industry from preying on the weak. But in that industry, weak, can be people with millions in the bank.  

Catalonia eh.

Halloween eh.

 

Ophilia

Warning about the hurricane started last week when it was someplace thousands of miles away someplace off the Azores, even south of them. But for some reason they had it correct. The darn thing came at us like it was laser guided. Well ball parking it anyway.
Sunday I climbed Slievenamon in what amounted to a tropical cloud. I trial ran my breathable waterproofs something that seemed like a good idea at the car but was soon wetter inside them than the water outside.
Anyhoo's visibility was about 50 feet, a very dangerous limit for those that don't know a walk, and there was some up that really needed a guide. But beyond the personal sauna inside an envelope of tropical air it was a glorious walk.
Monday arrived, and with it the predictions of doom. The storm had decided to skirt along the west coast like a pool ball along a baize cushion about 200 miles from me to the eye of the thing and so the line from about 2 to 5 on a clock. But since I'm about 60 miles from the coast and behind the mountain I missed the tail of the thing but caught the front edge big time for the wind was curving around the mountain.
Still, I had little bother early and was wondering if the storm had gone out to sea. I'd been out with the dog about 11;30 for a short walk when I realised the wind was picking up and when I got home the electric was gone. Soon after I heard a crack and looked out to see part of my chestnut tree had sloughed off. Down onto a canvas covered shed I have and sideswiped the pole with the satellite dishes on its way.
All in all the pass was 5 hours for me. Others had it worse, far worse. A guy dies while out cutting a tree off a road when another tree came down atop him. A woman was killed outright when she stopped her car, and the passenger hadn't a scratch on her.
And of course we had the usual gobshites out testing their mettle against the elements. In Galway (Salthill 53.257371, -9.091776) you had a guy swimming.
   

This has just gone wackadoodle. It took me from May to August to move 2%.

OK, there's something going wrong here. There has to be.

Jeepers.

Progress

I climbed 5% in a month and a bit. 36 days to be exact. Feeling a bit smug.

Soon. 

Der Wind spielt mit der Wetterfahne
Auf meines schönen Liebchens Haus.
Da dacht ich schon in meinem Wahne,
Sie pfiff den armen Flüchtling aus.

Er hätt' es [ehr]1 bemerken sollen,
Des Hauses aufgestecktes Schild,
So hätt' er nimmer suchen wollen
Im Haus ein treues Frauenbild.

Der Wind spielt drinnen mit den Herzen
Wie auf dem Dach, nur nicht so laut.
Was fragen sie nach meinen Schmerzen?
Ihr Kind ist eine reiche Braut.

Culture Night event.

I had an hour to get all my stuff in from the car, up to the chamber, and set up before the people started at 5. It wasn't long enough. I needed longer, or a helper. But since this was for the glory, meaning free, paying someone was right out. In fact keeping costs down was darn hard for I wanted a good offering that would impress people. And yes I do think that worked. Very few print, nevermind print at A3 (12" x 17" ish; 297mm x 420mm). And since I was using a three flash array on one side and a single on the other side of the face I had full control of the light, giving well exposed and shaped images.
Yes, it would be great to have time to truly develop beyond the basics. But since I had just 10min per person I think things came out good indeed.

There was only one true catastrophe. I was shooting tethered to the PC. Meaning the image file moved seamlessly off the camera and into the PC's programme Lightroom. Now I was usually putting the camera on the floor. But once I left it on the table with the PC and printer, when moving over to the lightbox to adjust it a bit for one of the people. I hooked the tethering cable with my foot. CRASH, BANG. Bits of electronic guts scattered all over. The 6 Philippine nurses flew. My heart went into my mouth. But pfew, the camera, and the lense both were OK, it was only the $€60 radio trigger I was using.
Since I had a double for almost everything, I simply undid the corpse and replaced it. There was a heart-stopping moment right then when I fired the shutter and, only got a black transfer to the PC. But I'd forgotten to change the flash and rotate the controller unit on the flash.

All told the last print I did was well after 10pm. And by then I counted 33 people with 150+ files. And printed about 50 in total.

In conclusion. I was worried, but not. Like that idiotic film with the baseball playing ghosts, I could only build it. The coming in, that I had no control over. And I'd assessed that it would work, and I'd be busy enough. Or I'd be sitting on my folding chair for the 6 hours playing with Twitter and Facebook on my phone. But everyone from a baby to a grandmother and grandfather came.

Event over.

Event is over. 33 sat for me and 70 came to the event. More or less 1 every 10min. So I was on the go from 5pm to 10.20pm.
Clean up took about an hour as I brought almost everything I could possibly need on the probability (certainty) that if I left it it would be the one thing I needed.
I shot tethered to the PC and that gave me a shock as I was setting up, when I thought I forgot the power cable.
 More later. As I'm an artist on the Rock of Cashel tomorrow and I need my sleep. It's not 12.30ishy. 

Très frustré.

I had a bit of a catastrophe when I was having my exhibition in early June. I, with a fortnights leeway of the opening sent the files to the Printer but I got a mail the day before the opening that they weren't able to do the job in the time. So I had a vast space available to me for two weeks with nothing in it. Luckily I had one big image from earlier in the year that I could hang so the place wasn't totally empty.
Anyway it was in my mind to buy a big photo printer and with the Culture Night event on the 22nd that I have on, I pulled the trigger in August and bought a Canon ip8750 A3+ six ink printer.
Together with the printer I added a few other things. Inks primarily; but two flash units; 100, A3 sheets of 260g photo paper; a soft box, a big 47 incher octogon shaped one; and a tripod that doesn't look like it spends it's life living in the surf, knee deep in rivers or/and being knocked about on mountains.
The first Lot of inks haven't arrived. Five sets of six. They started their trip to Ireland in Arras, north east of Paris. They had a little trip to CDG on the east of Paris where they were scanned but seem to have vanished. There are Waybills, but they seem to be the bills of lading for the entire darn shipment. So I had a printer, but still have no inks. Anyhoo's, I ordered another 3 sets on the 6th, using the belt and braces approach, just in case I don't get the first order. And just to make doubilly certain I ordered another two sets on Saturday when the second order didn't seem to be moving.

OK.
As I was writing the postman called with the delivery of the second order of inks. So at the very least I could check if the printer WOULD actually print.

   

This is the file I sent to the printer. And the printer did pick up on the spiders web on the righthand side.

New gas BBQ

I bought a BBQ today. Yes it may seem nuts to buy a BBQ at the end of summer. But since I used the last one winter and summer it didn't interfere in the decision. The Half Off tag did though. Three burners. And as can be seen from the steak, the two bits come to about 8-10oz, that there is loads of space for more. Now that piece of beef wasn't the greatest, and really wasn't a valid test. Tomorrow I will buy a decent piece of steak to see what occurs.

I've put a lightbox in so just look to the bottom of the image and click on the next or the arrows work they tell me. If you want full screen and enlargeable, Embiggin, right click.