Black Rock and around the court.

I've had a few positive photo excursions recently. The weather has been gorgeous and as a result enticing. I'm a little lazy, so even though I want to take pictures, I find it oddly difficult to drag myself out of the house to actually take the pictures. It's always very satisfying once I have though. Fortunately for me, I now have the added influence and encouragement of Andrew. He enjoys being indoors as much as I do (heh), but he also knows that photography is important to me and that I can use forceful nudges here and there.

This staircase is frequently engulfed in water from the tide.

So anywho, let's go to a few days ago. The sun was particularly blazing; I actually took off my coat for the first time in a long time. I was hot walking down the street back to the studio and that felt really nice. My boss took me out for food so we could discuss some organization restructure ideas of mine away from the bustle of the studio. He told me to take advantage of the beautiful weather and then dropped me off at Black Rock. I blogged about, and posted pictures of, Black Rock last summer too. It's a building/diving area on the coast along The Prom in Salthill. It's a fantastic place to be on a warm day, especially when armed with a camera.

Neat-o seaweed.

I sat on the edge of a cement partition for a while just soaking up the warmth of the sun. When I was in Ireland last summer I had only 3 legitimately warm days and I was honestly expecting misery and rain through this whole month. I've been very pleased. After mindless staring at the ocean I realized I only had a little bit of time before I had to walk back to work, so I set to work.

I wish I had had my 50mm with me. I had to crop this photo to get the perspective 

I wanted since my 24mm couldn't focus as close as I would have wished.

My first task set me to the staircase shown above. The few times I'd been to Black Rock before saw the tide up kind of high. I was fortunate this day because I was able to see a great amount of resilient sea life and rusted up old things on the shore.

My favorite from the day.

One wall was covered in mussels. So shiny, so abundant. Slightly luminescent. Speckled here and there were white swirling shells and I even saw some limpets. I almost leaned on a bed of closed up barnacles (that could have hurt) and I also found a shallow pool with a few glistening, closed up anemones. It was magical.

In this case the sun flares were perfect.

I'm not sure, but I think that's a small cluster of eggs.

Today I wrestled myself up and into a pair of shoes and out the front door. Everyday I walk past this odd cluster of tall, thin trees that's in a field adjacent to my house. It's kind of interesting, mostly at night, but I feel like it has potential. Today was the kind of day where Andrew's forceful nudging was greatly appreciated because I really wasn't feeling up to leaving the house >.>

Perfect opportunities for shallow DOF and manual focus practice.

Not too far down the street there was a semi-rowdy group of young adults sitting in lawn chairs on their driveway. They were loud and obnoxious and oddly distracting. I had a hard time focusing on my goals with them shrieking and honking with laughter in the background. Plus, I decided to wear my swishy/leafy skirt today and the tapered ends kept slapping against my ankles and making me jump thinking I had a bug or spider on me. Not to mention all of the thin dead twigs that were slapping up from my foot steps and poking me in the calves. It was an adventure.

Very spaced out.

I had an idea in my head of how I wanted to photograph this little copse of trees. I was seeing something sort of old, faded, maybe slightly out of focus. It's times like these that I wish I had an auto Holga filter, or a distorted lens. I need to save my money and get a lensbaby lens. Preferably the Composer. I loved the tilt/shift when I had my Techniques class, using a real tilt/shift camera no less, but the heft of the real camera was strenuous. 

I have a difficult time getting up tree shots that I like.

I'm calling today a successful outing. I wasn't feeling very hopeful about the shots while I was actually outside, but viewing them on the computer screen is always different. I was surprised by how many photos I was pleased with, and had to narrow them down to choose what would go up here. I didn't spend all that much time outside, but it was getting cold as the sun began to set and the hyenas in the lawn chairs were seriously bugging me.

Lots of brick over hurr.

Here's to another successful day sometime soon.

-MJ