Writing for life

Walking on Long Strand the other day we doubled back across the dunes and back along the road. It’s a conservation area, and to promote plant biodiversity they have horses grazing the dunes over the winter. I looked up and saw these two cresting a large dune, silhouetted against the overcast sky.

I haven’t posted any photos for a while. Just going through some of my shots of a trip to Scotland during all the snow in January, and thought I’d post a couple of them up here to share.

This is a willow tree outside our apartment looking out over Loch Rannoch… real winter wonderland stuff.

…and this is a shot of Schiehallion taken from the banks of Loch Rannoch early one morning. It was the only day we saw the mountain; for the rest of our trip it was shrouded with low cloud.

Picture framing service / sponsorship needed for Help Portrait Cork… can your business help?

Max 75 frames and mounts, needed – contact Paul O’Mahony for details

Paul O’Mahony, of MarketingWriteNow got in touch earlier today about a fantastic initiative taking place at the Clarion Hotel in Cork on Saturday 12 December from 9:30 to 15:30.

Help portrait is an international movement of photographers and other professional who are donating time, equipment and expertise to give something back to those less fortunate than them this Christmas. Here’s a video explaining the initiative.

The idea is to help boost the self image and self esteem of people who would never normally consider or be able to afford getting a professional photographer to take their portrait. Who’s that, you might ask? Well, according to the Help Portrait site it could include:

Who needs pictures? Anyone who wouldn’t normally have access to or be able to afford professional photography.

We suggest the following groups of people for starters…-

• the homeless
• orphans
• single moms (and their kids)
• single dads (and their kids)
• sick children
• sick parents
• the elderly
• army vets
• underprivileged families
• your neighbour?

Some of Cork’s leading photographers are already on board for Help Portrait, and they’ll be supported by photography assistants, make-up artists and a host of other volunteers on the day.

But the organisers are still desperately in need of support and sponsorship. If you’re in Cork, and would be willing to contribute time, resources, catering or a donation of cold, hard cash to support the initiative get in touch with Paul via the Marketing Write Now contact page.

And especially if you can donate / would be willing to sponsor photo frames and mounts for the event please talk to Paul before the end of the day tomorrow (Thursday 09/12) to get things sorted.

If your a blogger, twitterer or facebooker please help spread the word about this great event.

UPDATE: Read more about who was involved in Help Portrait Cork on Paul O’Mahony’s blog, and see some great photos of the action on the day over on Roger Overall’s blog

Paul O’Mahony (@Omaniblog on Twitter) was asking for Ferret Photos, so here are a few from the archives of Frida & Frankie… my dynamic duo.

I realised whilst digging these out (and they’re not the best) that I have surprisingly few ferret photos in my library, and will have to remedy that over the coming weeks.

They’re lots of fun, quick on their feet, and full of mischief. They’d probably be great practice subjects for wildlife work.

A couple of wildlife shots pulled out of the archive… the first, a lacewing, was shot on my old, old 3.2 Megapixel Nikon Coolpix 990 back in August 2003 – amazing for Macro work, and still going strong to this day.

The macro is something I miss on my Nikon D90 – and a decent macro lens is on the wish list.

The next was taken the weekend I got the D90, on a shopping trip to Cheshire Oaks outlet village. I was outside playing with my camera while my wife hit the shops. There were some starlings picking at bits of food discarded by passing shoppers.

While they aren’t everyone’s favourite bird, starlings have some amazingly iridescent plumage, and the detail is amazing.

So there I was on a remote West Cork headland, chucking a line into the water on the off-chance of picking up a couple of passing mackerel. On the nearby pebbly beach the rest of the family were waiting eagerly for the barbecue to heat up.

View Great spots in West Cork in a larger map

Showing an insensitive, but I have to admit well founded lack of faith in my fishing prowess, our friends had brought along some fresh mackerel, just in case. We’d also packed a supply of emergency sausages, so we wouldn’t go hungry.

The fish weren’t biting, so I decided to switch the mackerel lures for a spinner and try my luck at that. As I turned I saw two people looking out to sea, obviously scouting the location for some reason.

One of them asked if I’d caught anything… which was fair enough. The other asked “Is your name Calvin?”

Shot from the car window in Union Hall. This fellow was feeding in the lagoon.

For such big birds (up to 1 metre in height with a wingspan pushing 2 metres) they’re incredibly nervous and skittish.

As I stopped and lowered the car window this one moved quickly away, and then took flight. This image is cropped from the full frame (handy having 12MP to play with).

The shot I’m really after is a perfect reflection of a hunting heron in glass-calm water… but it’s proving a tricky endeavour. In the meantime I quite like this shot.

Just received this great offer from Pixmania, and thought it was well worth sharing here… €159 for 2TB of Iomega storage is not to be sniffed at.

My 500GB WD MyBook hard drive (also bought from Pixmania) is filling up fast since I got my Nikon D90 in May… so it won’t be long before I need to invest in a bigger drive myself.

Meanwhile, if you’re in the market for a bigger hard disk to store all your photos, videos and those all important system back-ups then check out the range of hard drives on offer at pixmania. The prices are the best around, and I’ve been very happy with the service when I’ve bought from them in the past.

There seem to be fledgling robins (Erithacus rubecula) all over the garden at the moment… exceptionally cute, noisy and pretty easy to get close to.

Slowly getting used to my Nikon D90… which is turning out to be an absolutely superb camera!

My old (10 years +) 28-200 Sigma zoom from my film SLR days, which I used for this shot, gives me 300mm at the long end with the DX sensor on the D90 (1.5 x magnification factor).

Works reasonably well, but….

I’m already hankering over better glass – need a macro, a decent wide angle and of course a long, fast (=very expensive) super telephoto for wildlife stuff.

I knew heading down the DSLR route was a bad (and potentially very expensive) idea .

Time to start saving….

Spotted (groan… pardon the pun) these beautiful flowers growing on the cliff above Silver Strand on Sherkin Island in West Cork last week.

Really gorgeous – but what really amazed me was how many of them there were growing in one spot.