This year’s Runway for Research Fashion show in aid of Cork Cancer Research Centre is on this Thursday 4th November at the Radison Little Island – 7pm Start.
I’ll be covering it for CCRC again this year so I hope to see as many people there as possible.
Come along and see style from a wide range of local boutiques and of course help raise funds for Research in to Gynaecological Cancer at CCRC.
More info on the CCRC website.
I have no idea what these beautiful flowers are (some kind of Iris or Lilly?). They grow very well in our garden and every year I end up taking photos of them at some stage to try out something new (a new camera, a new macro lens or shooting them in some different way).
I wasn’t going to bother this year and then I saw the late evening sun hitting them and tried shooting the light going through them.
As I did I spotted someone else had already made one of them home.
Courtmacsherry had everything a boy could want all that day!
Thanks to Mathew and his Mum and Dad for a lovely morning out there a couple of weeks ago.
Two of my pictures made it to the May 2010 issue of Food & Wine magazine including this one of Brendan from Augustine’s Rocket Soup (which actually appears three times including full page on page 51)
The recipe is there too if anyone fancies giving it a try!
The Misses and I had the pleasure of dining at Augustine’s @ The Clarion on Saturday night. Wow! We’re still talking about some of the dishes we had. Thanks so much to Brendan and Carol for a great night.
All this publicity is centred around the re-introduction of their tasting menu: six courses for €25. I can highly recommend it – 021 427 9375
http://www.clarionhotelcorkcity.com/eat-drink/augustines-restaurant/
Another successful day hunting for eggs in the garden on Sunday. Once again we ran the egg hunt with visual clues so that those kids who aren’t yet Readers can get there as quickly as those who can.
It’s a pretty simple set up: I wander around taking pictures of good places to hide things; print them small; cut them out; then hide them around the garden, one clue leading to another and eventually to some chocolate (it is easier if you work backwards).
I know, I should be getting down to some work. But when this appears out your window you’re bound to be distracted.
I originally was going to shoot just a section of the sky for the files (in case I ever need to ‘insert’ a sky into a under-dramatic photo) but the whole thing opened up into something quite wonderful in its own right. It is still stunning now the sun has sunk further and the lights on the hill have come up.
It may be cold, but the frosted landscape, low sun and clear blue skies have made things pretty magical these last few days.
Happy New Year.
For the record, I shot this hanging the camera out of the window using LiveView to get over the telephone wire. I took four separate shots with the 50mm and stitched them to make a single panorama.
With the Winter Solstice yesterday, technically the days are getting longer. Winter is receding.
I know it is hard to believe with the sun setting over the airport as I type this at 16:03.
However it will only be a matter of days before one of my in-laws tells me that there’s a ‘grand stretch’. It started innocently enough but seems to have become a sort of running joke as to who can be the first one to say it as soon as mid-winter has passed.
Maybe I’ll get there first this year!
OK so it is cold, but it is beautiful out there. We rugged the kids up and went out to find some ice in the garden. We probably hadn’t been out there since the great floods so all the vessels we had left for rain water collection were still out there – only now they had a sheet of ice on their surface up to an inch thick in places.
We found a few interesting things trapped in cold storage:
All the kids enjoyed themselves but let’s just say that I’m glad I’m not a Barbie in our house. It seemed a little cold for ice skating…
OK, so no pictures from today’s outing yet. So here’s one I took earlier:
I found myself standing in the rain in Shandon today, camera in hand, waiting. Waiting and wondering if I was on the cusp of one of those fantastic moments in Irish Landscape Photography: where the clouds break and the most fantastic light creates a scene of such beauty that it captures all that is magnificent about Ireland’s Landscape.
Or am I just a Muppet standing in the rain?
Well the moment never came. Today I was the Muppet.
I decided this morning to swap my evening’s leisure for an morning of taking photographs of the city. It was promising a beautiful autumn morning. I did my essentials and headed into town, that light fading fast and by the time I hit Shandon the blue was gone and the black was coming, followed by the grey and the damp.
By the time I trudged home up High Street that light did appear. A glorious sun shower with blue sky above and sun ripping through the rain. A rainbow above my head I should imagine. No chance of getting to a significant landmark to create a scene.
And now, as I look out the window the light is wonderful again. Bet you I won’t get to Turners Cross in time.
Good Irish Landscape, like good comedy, is all about…
…timing.
You might be wondering where the photographs that I did take are? Well they are slides so wait for another chance to finish the roll, for me to find somewhere to process them, at least a week to get them processed and then however long it takes for me to get around to scanning them. I hope they’re worth it.
